Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 072
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE, recording allocations of barley across several institutional categories. One entry credits a consignment to musicians or singers — suggesting a temple or palace ration system — while the largest entry logs a batch of fresh or newly harvested barley in a complex quantity spanning large units, smaller sub-units, and two fractional measures. The top of the tablet is broken off, destroying at least one entry entirely. Tablets like this are among the earliest writing in human history: the wedge-and-circle script was invented not for literature or prayer but for precisely this kind of grain accounting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The top of the tablet is broken — the first entry is completely gone. Of what survives: an unknown quantity of barley was given or deposited (the amount broke away with the missing edge); one large unit of barley was transported or delivered under an unidentified classification; three large units were allocated to musicians or singers; and the biggest single entry records six large units plus four smaller units and two fractional amounts of fresh barley. Several signs are damaged and only partially readable; the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] | [...] [...] | barley — given/dedicated 1 (large unit) | [delivery/transport?] — barley — [ZATU773~a: category heading?] 3 (large units) | barley — musician(s) — [A] 6 (large units) 4 (sub-units) 1 (fraction) 1 (fraction) | barley — new/fresh
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , SZE~a RU 1(N14) , GIR3~c# SZE~a ZATU773~a 3(N14)# , SZE~a NAR A 6(N14) 4(N01)# 1(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , SZE~a GIBIL
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 072. 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 (P325243) — 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.