Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 112
About this tablet
A very early accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of commodities — most clearly barley, and possibly beer or a related product — against numerical entries in proto-cuneiform notation. This is among the earliest writing in human history: not literature, but bookkeeping. The tablet is broken and its full contents cannot be recovered, but what survives shows the systematic numerical tallying that defined Mesopotamian administrative life from the very beginning of the written record. Its exact provenance is unknown, which is unfortunately common for tablets that passed through the antiquities market.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several commodity entries, most too damaged to read fully. One entry notes a quantity of barley (2 large units). Another gives a combined count of 1 large unit plus 1 small unit alongside an unidentified item or qualifier. A numerical sign of intermediate value appears alongside what may be a word for beer or a storage vessel. Several lines are too broken to read, and the beginning and end of the text are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2(N34), [...] beer(?) LAGAB~b [...], X [...] N, X 2(N14), barley 1(N18) 1(N03), 1(N14) 1(N01), X HI@g~a [...], [...] [...], [...]
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) , [...] KASZ~a LAGAB~b [...] , X [...] N , X 2(N14) , SZE~a 1(N18) 1(N03) , 1(N14) 1(N01) , X HI@g~a [...] , [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 112. 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 (P283919) — 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.