Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 130
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the earliest phases of writing in human history. It records numerical quantities against commodity or category signs whose exact meanings are not yet fully deciphered. Tablets like this were the bureaucratic backbone of early Mesopotamian temple economies — tallying goods, rations, or materials managed by large institutions. Because the Uruk script is still only partially understood and the tablet is fragmentary, many specific details remain opaque, but the format is unmistakably that of an archaic accounting document.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving lines record several entries pairing numerical amounts with commodity or category labels, though the left edge of the tablet is broken away and the first and last lines are entirely lost. One entry notes a quantity of N14 units associated with a sign combination possibly relating to fire or fuel (NE). Another line lists a more complex set of smaller numerical sub-units against what may be a qualifier or material label (HI). A third readable entry records a quantity against a sign that may denote a vessel or boat (MAR). A further partial line gives two numerical values. The rest of the tablet is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...]\n[...] 1(N14) | |HI×1(N57)|# NE~a\n[...] 1(N42~a) 1(N25) 1(N28~c) 1(N30~a) | 1(N57) HI@g~a\n[...] 1(N28) | MAR~a\n[...] 1(N05) 2(N42~a)\n[...] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] 1(N14) , |HIx1(N57)|# NE~a [...] 1(N42~a) 1(N25) 1(N28~c) 1(N30~a) , 1(N57) HI@g~a [...] 1(N28) , MAR~a [...] 1(N05) 2(N42~a) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 130. 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 (P325240) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.