Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 075
About this tablet
One of the earliest written documents in human history, this proto-cuneiform tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE) is an administrative accounting record from a large institutional household — most likely a temple or palace in southern Mesopotamia. It lists six entries pairing numerical notations with sign-groups that designate personnel categories (female workers), storage locations (granary-bins), and commodities, culminating in a large barley entry that appears to mark a disbursement or allotment. Writing was invented precisely for records like this one: not to tell stories, but to track the movement of grain and labor through a complex economy. Many of the logographic signs remain semantically opaque — at this early stage, cuneiform had not yet developed the phonetic layer that later makes Sumerian readable as a spoken language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists six accounting entries. The first records a single unit involving a female worker associated with a flour store or granary bin. The second notes one unit tied to an NA designation alongside MUD and BU — signs whose meaning is not recoverable. The third entry combines a slightly larger count with an as-yet-unread sign, a MU marker, and a 'mixed' qualifier. The fourth is the briefest: a single unit carrying only a DI designation. The fifth logs one larger unit of female workers or animals in what may be a small pen or a junior category. The final and largest entry tallies a substantial quantity of barley marked as distributed or allotted, with two additional signs — a DA classifier and an IM marker — that resist translation. Several entries cannot be meaningfully paraphrased: the signs are legible on the clay but their content remains locked in a script not yet fully deciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: 1[?] [unit] : female [worker] — granary-bin — flour Line 2: 1 [unit] : [NA] — [MUD] — [BU] Line 3: 1+[1] [units] : [ZATU714] — [MU] — mixed Line 4: 1 [unit] : [DI] Line 5: 1 [large unit] : female — [ME?] — small / [pen] Line 6: 7+2+1+1 [measures] : barley — [DA] — [disbursed] — [IM]
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)# , SAL UB ZI~a 1(N24) , NA~a MUD BU~a 1(N24) 1(N28) , ZATU714 MU HI@g~a 1(N26) , DI@t 1(N14) , SAL ME~a# TUR3~a 7(N14) 2(N39~a) 1(N26) 1(N24) , SZE~a DA~a BA IM~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 075. 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 (P325449) — 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.