Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000026, ex. 055
About this tablet
A tiny, heavily worn fragment of a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the late Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), most likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. Each line pairs a small numerical sign — a single unit count — with a logogram that probably names a commodity or category of goods; the final line records a larger subtotal. The logograms URI, MUD3, and MIR~b are otherwise attested in Uruk-period administrative lists but their precise commodity meanings remain debated. Tablets like this one represent the very earliest bookkeeping in human history, produced by an institution — probably a temple storehouse — that needed to track small quantities of distinct goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each surviving line records one unit of something: one of [unknown], one of URI, one of MUD3~a, one of MUD3@g, one of MIR~b, and then two more entries too broken to read. The final line records a larger total — 1(N34) 2(N14) units — against a category that is also lost. The tablet is too fragmentary to recover the full list, but what survives is a simple tally: one of this, one of that, with a running sum at the end.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , URI[?] 1(N01) , MUD3~a[?] 1(N01) , MUD3@g 1(N01) , MIR~b 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N34) 2(N14) [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , URI# 1(N01) , MUD3~a#? 1(N01) , MUD3@g 1(N01) , MIR~b 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N34) 2(N14) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000026, ex. 055. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006214) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.