Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 077
About this tablet
A grain-accounting tablet from the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE, making it one of the earliest administrative records in human history. It tracks multiple allocations of barley: some marked as purchases or exchanges, others recorded as goods 'given' or 'deposited,' and one batch linked to fish or the fishing institution. The entries reference the EN — the senior lord or institutional head who oversaw the great Mesopotamian temple storehouses. This tablet is a concrete example of why writing was invented in the first place: not for literature or religion, but to keep track of commodities and transactions too numerous to hold in human memory.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
One large measure of barley is recorded as a purchase or exchange at a named location. A slightly larger quantity — one large measure plus two smaller units — is allocated to a storehouse or container connected with the EN official, along with some record of eggs or offspring. Several smaller quantities are then entered as goods 'given' or 'deposited,' ranging from fractional medium units up to larger lots. A separate entry logs four large measures of barley in connection with fish. The final lines, partially surviving, appear to record progressively larger running totals of barley, but the last entry is too damaged to read completely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N14) — purchase/exchange: barley, [at/from] KI 1(N14) 2(N01) — [storehouse/container?]: barley, [for the] EN [lord/official], NUNUZ [eggs/offspring?] 1(N14) 3(N01) — barley: given/deposited 2(N19) — given/deposited [3(N19)] — [...] 2(N19) 4(N04) 3(N41) — given/deposited 4(N14) — barley: fish 7(N14) 5(N01) (partially preserved) — barley 7(N19) 4(N04) 3(N41) (partially preserved) [1(N45)? 5(N14)? 3(N01)?] 3(N41) (partially preserved) — barley [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N14) , SZAM2 SZE~a KI 1(N14) 2(N01) , GA2~a1? SZE~a EN~a NUNUZ~a1 1(N14) 3(N01) , SZE~a RU 2(N19) , RU [3(N19)] , [...] 2(N19) 4(N04) 3(N41) , RU 4(N14) , SZE~a KU6~a 7(N14)# 5(N01)# , SZE~a 7(N19)# 4(N04)# 3(N41)# [1(N45)? 5(N14)? 3(N01)?] 3(N41)# , SZE~a [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 077. 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 (P325062) — 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
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.