Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 101
About this tablet
A heavily damaged administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the earliest chapters of human writing. It records quantities of barley distributed as rations, using the proto-cuneiform numerical system that preceded the development of full writing. The clearest surviving entry logs seven large units of barley marked as consumed or issued — probably a ration disbursement to workers or institutional dependents. The rest of the entries are too fragmentary to assign to specific commodities or recipients, but the tablet is a rare physical relic of the very birth of accounting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Most of this tablet is broken away or too damaged to read. What survives records numerical quantities in an early Mesopotamian accounting format. The clearest line shows seven large measures of barley issued as rations or consumed. Other lines list quantities — four, five, two large units, and a few smaller ones — but the goods and recipients those numbers belonged to are lost. The rest of the tablet is illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [lacuna] [...] 7 large units — barley, consumed/ration [...] [lacuna] [...] [...] 4 large units — [...] [...] 5 large units — [...] [...] 2 large units — [...] [...] [lacuna] [...] [...] 4 small units — [...] [...] 1 medium unit(?) — [...] [...] [lacuna] [...] [...] [lacuna] [...] [...] 1 small unit(?) — [...] [...] [lacuna] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 7(N14) , SZE~a GU7 [...] , [...] [...] 4(N14) , [...] [...] 5(N14) , [...] [...] 2(N14) , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 4(N01) , [...] [...] 1(N04)# , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 101. 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 (P328737) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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.