CUSAS 01, 050

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P325491

About this tablet

One of the earliest accounting records in human history, this small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) tallies several categories of small livestock — sheep, rams, goats, and she-goats — against what appears to be a disbursement or ration marker (BAR). The numbers are recorded in the proto-cuneiform numerical system using impressed circular and wedge-shaped tokens. The tablet is too damaged in places to read every entry fully, but the surviving lines reveal a meticulous count of animals by sex and species, characteristic of the centralised temple economy that drove early literacy in ancient Iraq. It is one of thousands of similar administrative tablets that show writing was invented not for poetry or religion, but for bookkeeping.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This record lists small livestock distributed or allocated from a herd: 5 sheep (female, disbursement portion), 4 male goats, 3 rams (disbursement portion), 3 male goats (disbursement portion). Two lines are too damaged to read. Then: 8 she-goats (disbursement portion), 16 sheep, and 13 rams. The rest is lost or broken.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

5 , BAR + sheep (female) 4 , goat (male) 3 , BAR + ram (male sheep) 3 , BAR + goat (male) [...] , [...] [3(N14)] 8(N01) , [...] 8 , BAR + she-goat 1(N14) 6(N01) [= 16] , sheep 1(N14) 3(N01) [= 13] , ram (male sheep)

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

5(N01) , BAR UDU~a
4(N01) , MASZ2
3(N01) , BAR UDUNITA~a
3(N01) , BAR MASZ
[...] , [...]
3(N14)# 8(N01)# , [...]
8(N01) , BAR UD5~a
1(N14) 6(N01) , UDU~a
1(N14) 3(N01) , UDUNITA~a

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 050. 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 (P325491) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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Related sources

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