Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 162
About this tablet
This is a small, badly damaged administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the earliest phases of writing in human history. It records quantities of commodities and personnel categories — including what may be beer, foodstuffs, women or female workers, and officials of some rank — alongside numerical notations in the proto-cuneiform counting system. The signs are proto-cuneiform, the writing system's earliest form, before Sumerian became fully phonetic. Tablets like this are the world's oldest administrative paperwork: institutional bookkeeping from a time when writing had only just been invented to track goods and labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a fully coherent record, but what survives appears to be a list of allocations or rations: a small quantity of beer (or a related liquid) is noted, along with entries for plants or foodstuffs, female workers or women in some category, officials of lordly rank, ritual or ceremonial objects (ŠITA), and round numbers of unspecified goods — including one large-order quantity. The beginning and end of the tablet are lost, and several entries in the middle are too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], HAL 1(N30~a) [small unit], beer(?) |ZATU714×HI@g~a| MU 2(N01) [= 2], plant(?) mound(?) 3(N01) [= 3], day(?) / sun(?) woman HAL 2(N14) [= 20], young/small HAL [broken] woman 2(N01) [= 2], lord(?) TU~b |GIŠ×ŠU2~a| 2(N14) 5(N01) [= 25], ŠITA~a1 NAMEŠDA X 5(N01) 1(N57) [= 5 + large unit], great 1(N01) [= 1], [...] [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo10 uncertain terms ↓
- HAL — Proto-cuneiform HAL: conventionally read as related to division/apportionment of goods, but precise administrative function in Uruk period remains debated; could also function as a personal name element.
- KASZ~b |ZATU714xHI@g~a| — The combined sign group is interpreted as a type of beer or beer-related commodity/vessel; the exact product and measure are uncertain.
- U2~a — Typically read as 'plant' or 'herb/fodder'; exact commodity unclear in this context.
- DU6~b — Read as 'mound' or 'ruin-mound' (tell); its precise administrative meaning in this context is uncertain — may be a toponym or determinative.
- TU~b — Sign function in this context is unclear; may relate to 'to enter/bring' or be part of a compound sign group.
- |GIŠxŠU2~a| — A compound sign; reading and meaning in this administrative context are uncertain and cannot be verified from the photo.
- ŠITA~a1 — Conventionally read as a type of cultic vessel or libation object; exact referent debated.
- NAMEŠDA — Sign reading tentative; possible title or category of personnel/goods; meaning in Uruk period context is not firmly established.
- MU — In Uruk period texts MU can denote 'name', 'year', or function as a determinative; precise role here is unclear.
- GAL~a — Read as 'great/large'; may modify a preceding quantity or denote a high-status category, but context is lost due to fragmentation.
Reasoning ↓
The photograph shows a fragmentary clay tablet broken into several pieces (the main inscribed face is the central piece, labeled CUNES 50-11-068 on a side fragment). The surface is heavily eroded and pitted, with at least one perforation/hole through the tablet face visible in the upper-central area. Cuneiform impressions are visible in roughly seven to eight ruled or divided registers on the main face, with round numerical impressions (N01 and N14 types) clearly discernible alongside angular sign-impressions, though resolution and erosion make precise sign identification difficult in several lines. Signs that can broadly be confirmed from the photo include what appear to be circular/round numerical impressions consistent with N01 and N14, and diagonal/angular strokes consistent with proto-cuneiform signs; the HAL, SAL, and EN~a signs are plausible from the transliteration but cannot be individually verified with certainty from this photo. The reverse (bottom large fragment in photo) appears largely blank or too eroded to read. The transliteration's note of HAL (apportionment), SAL (woman/female worker), TUR (child/junior), and EN~a (high official) aligns with typical Uruk-period ration and distribution tablet formats. The sign glossed as |GIŠxŠU2~a| and the X in line 7 cannot be verified from the photo. This is a transliteration-assisted reading; photo confirms general layout and numerical sign types but not individual lexical signs with high confidence.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 14, 2026 · 2121 in / 1203 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , HAL 1(N30~a) , KASZ~b |ZATU714xHI@g~a| MU 2(N01) , U2~a DU6~b 3(N01) , U4 SAL HAL 2(N14) , TUR HAL# SAL 2(N01) , EN~a TU~b |GISZxSZU2~a| 2(N14) 5(N01) , SZITA~a1 NAMESZDA X 5(N01) 1(N57) , GAL~a 1(N01) , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 162. 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 (P325250) — 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.