Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 088
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), recording multiple categories of goods under institutional management: cattle, horns, garlic, copper, barley, timber, maces, silver, and fish. The long final line — combining barley, workers, a lord, disbursements, maces, and carp in a single accounting cell — is characteristic of Uruk-period composite entries that bundle commodities, personnel, and transaction types together. Several lines have lost their quantities to breakage. At least one sign (ZATU777) remains undeciphered by modern scholars, a reminder that proto-cuneiform was not yet a full phonetic script and some sign meanings have never been recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Six oxen are entered in the first line. Below that, quantities of horns and garlic appear, but those numbers are broken away and lost. A line for copper is too damaged to read fully — one sign in it cannot be identified at all, and another (ZATU777) remains undeciphered. The final line, evidently a composite summary entry, records 5 large units and then lists: barley, a divine or institutional marker, reed mats, an allotment, a remainder, male workers (partly damaged), timber, an elite or high-status category, a lord or institutional head, a mixed category, maces, a delivery, silver, an uncertain damaged category, and carp. The precise logic linking all these items in a single entry cannot be recovered with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine6 cattle [lost], horns [lost], garlic copper [sign damaged] — [unidentified sign] — [ZATU777: undeciphered] 5 [large units] | barley — [AN: divine/sky marker] — reed mat — allotted — remainder — male workers [sign damaged] — timber — [NIM~a: high/elite/Elam?] — lord/institutional head — mixed — mace — delivered — silver/precious — [IB~a: damaged] — carp
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo10 uncertain terms ↓
- ZATU777 — An unidentified or rare archaic sign catalogued in the ZATU sign list; its commodity or semantic referent is not established.
- URUDU~c# — The # indicates the editor's uncertainty in sign identification; copper is the standard reading of URUDU but the variant form ~c and damage make this tentative.
- X — An unread sign between URUDU~c# and ZATU777; illegible in both transliteration and photo.
- SZE~a AN KID~b — This cluster may refer to dried or stored grain (barley under a roof/covering of reed matting), but the exact compound meaning in proto-cuneiform is not deciphered with certainty.
- TAK4~a — Often read as 'remainder' or 'balance left over' in disbursement contexts; the archaic referent is an extrapolation from later Sumerian usage.
- NIM~a — Can mean 'high,' 'fly,' or refer to a geographic region (Elam/highlands); context here is unclear.
- SZITA@g~a — A mace or weapon sign in some readings; the @g indicates a specific graphemic variant whose exact referent is debated.
- SUHUR — Conventionally read as a type of fish (carp) or as a personal/professional category; its role at the end of this administrative line is uncertain.
- IB~a# — The # indicates editorial uncertainty; may relate to a body part (hip/flank) used as a commodity classifier, or a category of person; not securely established.
- N14 — Represents a higher-order sexagesimal unit; its exact value (whether 10, 60, or other) depends on which numerical system is in use for the commodity recorded, which is itself uncertain here.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows two faces of a small, lens-shaped clay tablet (the characteristic form of early Uruk period tablets), displayed alongside its edges and the reverse. The obverse (upper image) preserves cuneiform-precursor impressed and incised signs arranged in two columns separated by a vertical ruling line, with horizontal case divisions. The upper left section shows circular impressed numerals consistent with N01 and N14 signs; the GU4 (cattle) sign is plausibly discernible in the upper left case. The SI, SZUM, and URUDU signs in the middle registers are partially legible as incised forms but the surface is cracked along a diagonal fracture that damages several cases, making independent verification difficult. The dense sign cluster in the final line — the long sequence of commodity and administrative signs — is present in the photo but at this resolution individual signs cannot be reliably distinguished from one another; the transliteration must be accepted on scholarly authority for that line. The reverse (lower image) is heavily eroded and shows only faint traces of signs or is blank/worn; cannot verify any content from the photo. The photo broadly confirms the transliteration for the upper portion; the lower long line cannot be independently verified. No standard published parallel manuscript was available for cross-check; reading follows the CUSAS 01 edition.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 14, 2026 · 2088 in / 1154 out tokens
Transliteration
6(N01) , GU4 [...] , SI [...] , SZUM URUDU~c# X ZATU777 5(N14) , SZE~a AN KID~b BA TAK4~a ERIM~a# GISZ NIM~a EN~a HI SZITA@g~a DU KU3~a IB~a# SUHUR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 088. 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 (P325155) — 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.