Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 133
About this tablet
An archaic administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of commodities — most likely barley and fish (carp) — alongside institutional or locational identifiers such as a 'house' (storehouse) and a possible sea or coastal reference. The tablet is broken in several places and heavily damaged, making full interpretation impossible. It belongs to the earliest phase of writing in human history, when proto-cuneiform scribes in southern Mesopotamia were developing the very first notation system specifically to manage agricultural and economic surpluses for large institutions. Even in its fragmentary state, it offers a glimpse into the commodity-tracking routines of a Uruk-period administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries record: four units of an unspecified commodity (the rest of that line is broken); two unidentified items; quantities associated with a storehouse or institutional building and a place or category called UB; a possible seed(-grain) entry; one unit of something unidentified; one unit designated by a HI sign (perhaps a commodity or qualifier); one large unit of what may be barley; and finally an entry for carp, linked to AB — a term that can mean 'sea,' 'ocean,' or a coastal designation. Several lines are too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 4, [...] [...], X X [...], [...] House (E2) UB [...], X Seed(?) 1, X 1 (N24 unit), HI (qualifier/commodity?) 1 (large unit, N39~a), Barley(?) Carp — Sea/Coastal(?) [institution or place]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 4(N01)# , [...] [...] , X X [...] , [...] E2~a UB [...] , X NUMUN#? 1(N01) , X 1(N24) , HI@g~a# 1(N39~a) , SZE~a#? SUHUR AB~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 133. 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 (P325451) — 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.