Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 095
About this tablet
An Uruk-period administrative tablet, almost certainly from southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and dating to roughly 3300–3000 BCE, recording quantities of at least three commodities: goats, beer, and a large measured amount of barley. The closing sign GU7 ('consumed' or 'disbursed') marks the record as a ration account — goods drawn from institutional storage and given out to workers or dependents. Tablets like this are among the earliest written documents in human history, produced not for literature but for bureaucratic bookkeeping at the very moment writing was invented. This example is partially broken: the first two lines survive only in fragments, but the surviving cereal and liquid tallies, recorded in the proto-cuneiform numerical system, are still legible.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Part of this record is lost. What survives shows: an entry for goats (the quantity is broken away), an entry for beer associated with a storage location (also partially lost), and then a large measured quantity of barley, given in several denominations of the archaic capacity system. A second numerical grouping follows — likely a related total or a count in a different system. The tablet closes with a single word: consumed, or disbursed as rations. Whatever these goods were, they were drawn from storage and used up.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], goat(s) [...] [...], storage-heap, beer 1(N45) 5(N14) 3(N01) 3(N39~a) 1(N24) 1(N29~a) 1(N30~c) — barley 7(N19) 5(N04) 1(N29~b) Consumed [as rations]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , MASZ2 [...] [...] , DU6~a KASZ~b 1(N45) 5(N14) 3(N01) 3(N39~a) 1(N24) 1(N29~a) 1(N30~c) , SZE~a 7(N19) 5(N04) 1(N29~b) GU7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 095. 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 (P325737) — 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.