Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 177
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of fish and possibly reeds or other commodities alongside numerical notations. It is one of the earliest types of writing in human history — not yet a language in the full sense, but a system of signs and numbers used by temple administrators to track goods and distributions. The tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a complete transaction, but the fish sign and numerical impressions are consistent with ration or commodity records typical of early Mesopotamian institutional bookkeeping. Its exact provenance is unknown, which is common for many Uruk-period tablets that passed through the antiquities market before reaching university collections.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several entries involving fish and numerical quantities, with at least one reference to something 'small' or 'junior' (possibly a sub-grade of commodity or a junior worker), and a damaged entry that may concern reeds. Several lines are too broken to read. The surviving entries suggest a short accounting list — quantities of fish and possibly other goods tallied under a basic administrative format. Much of the tablet's content is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) fish [with] mouth/opening 2(N02) 1(N58) 1(N04) 1(N02) [...] , [...] 1(N02) [...] 1(N01) , junior/small [...] 1(N01) , reed(?) [damaged sign] 1(N01) [...] [...] 3(N01) [...] , TA~a [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01) , KU6~a KA~a 2(N02) 1(N58) 1(N04) 1(N02) [...] , [...] 1(N02) [...] 1(N01) , TUR [...] 1(N01) , GI# X 1(N01) [...] [...] 3(N01) [...] , TA~a [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 177. 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 (P325247) — 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.