Position in chronology
CUSAS 31, 170
About this tablet
This is a small, badly damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–2900 BCE), one of the earliest phases of writing in human history. It records quantities of commodities and possibly personnel — jars, animals, and persons connected to an EN (a high-status lord or official) associated with Šuruppak, one of the great early Mesopotamian cities. Tablets like this are the very first bureaucratic records: temple or palace administrators tracking goods and people with a notation system that was still evolving into what we would later call Sumerian writing. The mention of Šuruppak in such an early context is historically striking, since that city becomes much better documented only in the Early Dynastic period a few centuries later.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a short list of commodities and people: 1 jar, 3 persons (of an uncertain category), and 2 EN-officials associated with Šuruppak. Further entries mention a group designated 'IB,' 5 male animals (sheep or goats), and 1 item of a type too damaged to name. The final line may be a summary or total. Much of the tablet is broken, and several entries cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] 1 , jar 3 , person(s) X 2 , EN [of/at] Šuruppak [...] [...] IB 5 , male sheep/goat(s) 1 , [ZATU676] [...] 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(N01) , DUG~a# 3(N01) , NA~a X 2(N01) , EN~a SZURUPPAK~a# [...] [...] IB~a 5(N01) , UDUNITA~a 1(N01) , ZATU676~b [...] KISZ#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 31, 170. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA (P433200) — 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.