Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 123
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative accounting tablet from the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE — among the very earliest written records in human history. It is a multi-commodity ledger of the kind kept by a major institutional storehouse, most likely attached to a temple or palace complex in southern Mesopotamia. Each line follows the characteristic Uruk format: a numerical sign recording a quantity, followed by a logogram identifying the commodity or personnel category — in this case ranging from storehouse documents and senior officials to vessels, barley, female precious-metal workers or goods, and lion-related designations. Several lines are broken or missing, but the surviving entries are a vivid trace of the administrative pressure that drove the invention of writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a running ledger with entries across many commodity and personnel categories. One large-unit measure goes to an ABGAL — a sage or senior institutional official. A unit of storehouse records follows. Then: one vessel with mixed or processed contents; a large-unit allocation of female precious-metal workers or silver items (the exact number partially damaged); a unit of an unidentified compound commodity; a medium-unit measure of a grain product in the TI category; a large-unit measure of lion goods or a lion designation; and one unit of something now lost. Near the end of the tablet, bigger tallies accumulate — for a processed mixed commodity and for barley — but the leading figures in both cases have broken away, leaving only the trailing digits. The final two lines record further vessels and grain products in quantities that are also lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] | [...] 1(N30~c) | ABGAL — one [large unit]: sage / senior official 1(N24) | DUB~a E2~a — one [unit]: storehouse record(s) [...] 1(N30~c) | [commodity lost] 1(N01) | |DUG~b×HI| — one: mixed-[content] vessel 1(N30~c) | 2(N57)# SAL KU3~a — one [large unit]: [2?] female precious-metal [workers / silver items] 1(N24) | |HI×1(N57)| — one [unit]: [compound commodity, meaning uncertain] 1(N39~a) | TI@t GUG2 — one [medium unit]: TI-type grain product 1(N30~c) | PIRIG~b1 — one [large unit]: lion [product / designation] 1(N30~a) | [...] — one [unit]: [commodity lost] [...] 1(N05) 2(N42~a) 1(N30~a) | HI@g~a — [leading quantity lost] ...+ 1(N05) + 2(N42~a) + 1(N30~a): processed / mixed commodity [...] 3(N01) 4(N39~a) 1(N24) | SZE~a — [leading quantity lost] ...+ 3(N01) + 4(N39~a) + 1(N24): barley [...] | |DUG~b×HI| — [quantity lost]: mixed-[content] vessel [...] | GUG2 — [quantity lost]: grain product
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N30~c) , ABGAL 1(N24) , DUB~a E2~a [...] 1(N30~c) 1(N01) , |DUG~bxHI| 1(N30~c) , 2(N57)# SAL KU3~a 1(N24) , |HIx1(N57)| 1(N39~a) , TI@t GUG2 1(N30~c) , PIRIG~b1 1(N30~a) , [...] [...] 1(N05) 2(N42~a) 1(N30~a) , HI@g~a [...] 3(N01) 4(N39~a) 1(N24) , SZE~a [...] , |DUG~bxHI| [...] , GUG2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 123. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: CUNES 51-01-115 (Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA) — from uncertain (mod. uncertain) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts, P325362). 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.