Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 079
About this tablet
An Uruk-period grain-accounting tablet from roughly 3200–3000 BCE, placing it among the earliest administrative writing in human history. Each entry pairs a large impressed numerical quantity with the proto-cuneiform sign for barley; the first and fullest entry adds qualifiers indicating the grain was 'new' or 'fresh' and linked to some kind of purchase or exchange transaction, along with a compound marker that may denote a date or time-period. Writing at this stage was not yet phonetic — it recorded counts and categories of goods, not spoken language. The lower portion of the tablet is broken, leaving the final two entries only partially legible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The first entry accounts for a very large quantity of fresh barley recorded as a purchase or exchange, with a compound time or date marker and a further entity qualifier whose meaning is not yet fully understood. A second, smaller barley consignment follows, its final figure slightly damaged at the edge. Three more numerical entries come after that: one large quantity recorded on its own, then two further entries whose commodity labels are either missing or too broken to read — the last lines are only partially preserved.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: 2(N34) 2(N36) 6(N14) 3(N19) 2(N01) — new barley; purchase/exchange; [compound day/time sign]; [NAM2] Line 2: 3(N34) 1(N14) 5(N01) [last sign partly damaged] — barley Line 3: 2(N46) 2(N19) — Line 4: 3(N14) [partly damaged; remainder broken] — Line 5: 3(N19) [broken] 3(N04) [partly damaged] —
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N34) 2(N36) 6(N14) 3(N19) 2(N01) , GIBIL SZE~a SZAM2 |U4x2(N57)| NAM2 3(N34) 1(N14) 5(N01)# , SZE~a 2(N46) 2(N19) , 3(N14)# [...] , 3(N19) [...] 3(N04)# ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 079. 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 (P325738) — 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.