Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 037
About this tablet
One of the oldest administrative documents in human history, this small lens-shaped clay tablet dates to the late Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE — centuries before Sumerian became a readable written language. It was produced in an early Mesopotamian urban bureaucracy, probably in southern Iraq or one of its administrative colonies, to track quantities of institutional goods. The tablet lists amounts against several commodity categories, including what is conventionally read as salt, and closes with a grand total of 52 — a sum the individual entries confirm exactly. Its importance lies not in drama but in the sheer antiquity of the accounting impulse: already at the birth of writing, administrators felt compelled to add everything up.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of commodity entries with their quantities: 18 units of an unknown item (the category sign is broken), then 5, 2, and 6 units respectively of three variants of a sun-marked category sign — possibly different grades or time-periods of a single commodity. Next come 2 tablets or records, 10 units of salt, 6 units of a second lost category, and 3 more units of the sun-marked type. The final line gives the grand total: 52, under the heading of a supervisor or institutional category. The numbers add up exactly.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[1]8, [...] 5, |U4×3(N57)| 2, |U4×2(N57)| 6, |U4×1(N57)| 2, DUB~b [tablet/record] 10, MUN~a1 [salt] 6, [...] 3, |U4×1(N57)| [5]2, KISZ PAP~a [total — elder/supervisor category]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[1(N15)] 8(N02)# , [...] 5(N02) , |U4x3(N57)| 2(N02) , |U4x2(N57)| 6(N02)# , |U4x1(N57)| 2(N02) , DUB~b 1(N15) , MUN~a1 6(N02)# , [...] 3(N02) , |U4x1(N57)| 5(N15)# 2(N02)# , KISZ PAP~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 037. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA (P325492) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.