Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 080
About this tablet
One of the oldest forms of writing in human history: a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE, recording allocations or deliveries of reeds and barley under the authority of high institutional officials. The 'EN' title holders named here were among the most powerful figures in early Mesopotamian city-states — lords, chief priests, or institutional heads — and this tablet is essentially their paperwork. The larger barley entries on the third and fourth lines likely represent rations or consignments passing through a temple or palace storeroom. What makes tablets like this remarkable is that writing was invented precisely to keep track of transactions like these: numbers and commodities came first, narrative came much later.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a small quantity of reeds recorded as a single entry. A damaged line follows, mentioning an EN official alongside two unidentified sign combinations — what was written there is now too broken to read. The main body of the record then logs a large consignment of barley — five large units, two medium units, five small units, plus two fractional measures — received under the authority of the lord-official, with a further qualifier involving a second EN title-holder, an unidentified sign, and an overseer designation. A second, slightly smaller barley allotment follows (five large units, one small unit, and fractions). The tablet closes with a brief numerical notation of two medium units and four small units, possibly a subtotal or a separate sub-account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24) — reed [...] — lord-official (EN~a) DUR2 ZATU751~a; received [...] 5(N14) 2(N19) 5(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24) — barley; 2(N57); received by the lord-official (SZU EN~a); lord-official (EN~a) DUR2 ZATU751~a — overseer (PA~a) 5(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24) — barley 2(N19) 4(N04)
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)# 2(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , GI [...] , EN~a# DUR2# ZATU751~a# SZU [...] 5(N14) 2(N19) 5(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , SZE~a 2(N57) SZU EN~a EN~a DUR2 ZATU751~a PA~a 5(N14) 1(N01) 2(N39~a) 1(N24) , SZE~a 2(N19) 4(N04)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 080. 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 (P325740) — 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.