Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 126
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the earliest forms of writing ever produced. It records quantities of commodities — possibly including precious metal, barley, and other goods — alongside category signs for workers or institutional roles. Tablets like this were the bureaucratic backbone of the world's first cities, tracking the flow of resources through temple storehouses. Because the text is heavily damaged and many Uruk-period signs remain only partially deciphered, much of the specific content cannot be recovered with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries record several commodity allocations: a quantity designated LA2 SUG5 (a balance or deficit of some kind), one unit of GUG2, one unit of something involving precious metal or silver, a further entry for SZUBUR GUG2, one unit of NIM, and a handful of other entries that are too damaged to read. Toward the end, a quantity of barley is noted alongside a time marker that may indicate a six-day period or a date. Several lines are completely broken away, and the overall account — likely an institutional ledger tracking goods in or out of a temple storehouse — cannot be fully reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] ABZU(?) 3(N39~a) — LA2 SUG5 1(N28) — GUG2 1(N28)(?) — AN(?) KU3~a(?) [...] — SZUBUR GUG2~a(?) 1(N30~a)(?) — NIM~b1 [...] — HI@g~a(?) [...] — ABZU(?) [...] — [...] 1(N28)(?) — DU8~c GUG2 [X] 1(N39~a) — SAL(?) SZU(?) PAP~a [...] — [...] |U4.6(N08)|(?) — SZE~a (barley) — |U4.6(N08)|
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , ABZU#? 3(N39~a) , LA2 SUG5 1(N28) GUG2 1(N28)# , AN#? KU3~a# [...] , SZUBUR GUG2~a? 1(N30~a)# , NIM~b1 [...] , HI@g~a# [...] , ABZU#? [...] , [...] 1(N28)# , DU8~c GUG2 X 1(N39~a) , SAL# SZU# PAP~a [...] , [...] |U4.6(N08)|# , SZE~a , |U4.6(N08)|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 126. 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 (P325455) — 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.