Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 217
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest types of written documents in human history — an administrative accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), when writing was first being invented in southern Mesopotamia. It records quantities of commodities, most likely cereals or other agricultural goods, using the large round numerical signs characteristic of the earliest proto-cuneiform bookkeeping. The tablet is badly damaged, with most entries broken, but the surviving signs are consistent with the kind of institutional tallying — tracking what was received, disbursed, or owed — that drove the invention of writing in the first place. Its exact origin is unknown, and it is now held at Cornell University.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this ancient accounting record lists several large quantities of goods: five big units of something now lost, then three big units of barley (or a cereal grain combined with a title-element), then more broken entries recording quantities of twenty or so units each. Near the bottom, a sign associated with foot-travel or messenger personnel appears alongside what may be a word for 'chief' or 'head-count.' Most of the entries are too damaged to read completely, and the commodities in several lines cannot be identified.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 5 large units(?) [of ...]\n3 large units of [barley/cereal + NAM2]\n[...] [...]\n[...] [...]\n3 large units(?) of X [...]\n[...] [...]\n20 [...] [...]\n20(?) [...] [...]\n[...] foot-sign SAG(?) [...]\n[...] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 5(N14)# , [...] 3(N14) , |SZE~a.NAM2| [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 3(N14)# , X [...] [...] , [...] 2(N14) [...] , [...] 2(N14)# [...] , [...] [...] , GIR3@g~b SAG# [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 217. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Rare Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York, USA (P006350) — 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.