Position in chronology
CUSAS 31, 047
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of goods or institutional allocations — likely involving a plow (or plow-related category), a she-goat, and a high-status title or office (EN+NUN). These tiny lenticular or leaf-shaped clay tablets are among the earliest written documents in human history, produced by temple bureaucrats to track agricultural resources and labor. The signs are pictographic and numerical rather than phonetic, meaning the tablet records what and how much — not who said it or how it was spoken. The final KIŠ sign may introduce a subtotal or summary line, a bookkeeping convention already visible at the very dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries record: a quantity of [something] counted in large units (N14 notation); an allocation to an office-holder designated EN+NUN, noted as '12 units plus PAP'; a reference to a NA2-category item (damaged, uncertain); 2 units assigned to a plow or plow-related category; 1 she-goat; and what appears to be a summary or total line introduced by the KIŠ sign. Several lines are too broken to read. The reverse and edges of the tablet are nearly blank or eroded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] 1(N14) 1(N14) 2(N01) , PAP [EN+NUN] [...] NA2~b1[?] 2(N01) , APIN~a 1(N01) , UD5~a [...] 1(N15) , KIŠ
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] [...] 1(N14)# 1(N14)# 2(N01) , PAP~a#? |EN~a+NUN~b| [...] NA2~b1#? 2(N01) , APIN~a 1(N01) , UD5~a [...] 1(N15) , KISZ#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 31, 047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: private: anonymous, unlocated (P235781) — 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.