Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 176
About this tablet
This is one of the world's earliest administrative records — a small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), when writing had only just been invented in southern Mesopotamia. It appears to be an account of barley quantities alongside notations that likely record distributions or exchanges, with references to fish and possibly a courtyard or storage enclosure. Tablets like this were not literature or history: they were the paperwork of an ancient institution — temple or storehouse bureaucrats tracking who received what and how much. Their significance is enormous: they show that writing began not as poetry or religion but as an accounting tool.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records several batches of barley in different quantities, apparently being distributed or exchanged. One entry links the barley to fish and what may be a courtyard or storage area. A final entry records a quantity associated with an enclosure or container of uncertain type. Several lines are partially damaged and their precise numbers cannot be read with full confidence; the last line's commodity category remains unclear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine6(N14)[?] barley — base/root — exchange/disbursement 4(N34) 1(N36) 2(N45) 3(N14) — barley disbursed, exchange; fish; courtyard 4(N34) 1(N45) 3(N01) — barley 1(N36) 9(N19) 3(N19) 3(N04) — [commodity/enclosure sign |LAGAB~b.TE|]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
6(N14)# , SZE~a# UR2# , SZAM2# BA 4(N34) 1(N36) 2(N45) 3(N14) , SZE~a BA# SZAM2 KU6 KISAL~b1 4(N34) 1(N45) 3(N01) , SZE~a 1(N36) 9(N19) 3(N19)# 3(N04) , |LAGAB~b.TE|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 176. 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 (P257532) — 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.