Position in chronology
MS 2431
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest administrative records in human history — a small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of commodities — likely including reed, silver or precious metal, salt, and fine wool — moving in and out of an institutional storehouse, possibly under the authority of an EN-official (a high-ranking temple lord). Tablets like this represent the very invention of writing: not literature or law, but accountancy, the need to track goods across a large bureaucratic organization. The signs are proto-cuneiform, the direct ancestor of the later Sumerian script.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of commodity entries against numerical totals: one large unit of fine wool; five smaller units distributed; nine units of reed; one larger plus one smaller unit assigned to the lord's account; one unit of silver or precious metal for the storehouse; six units of an unspecified good; and finally a larger combined quantity — three large units plus two smaller — involving salt brought in or delivered, linked again to fine wool. The rest is too damaged or abbreviated to read with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N57) units, fine wool [RAD~a] 5(N01) units, distribution [BA] 9(N01) units, reed [GI] 1(N14) 1(N01) units, lord/EN-official [EN~a] 1(N01) unit, silver/precious metal — storehouse [KU3~a E2~a] 6(N02) units, [commodity unclear] 3(N14) 2(N01) units — 1(N57) 2(N57) — salt [MUN~a1], delivery/bringing [DU], approach/receipt [TE], fine wool [SIG RAD~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(N57) SIG RAD~a 5(N01) , BA# 9(N01) , GI 1(N14) 1(N01) , EN~a 1(N01) , KU3~a E2~a# 6(N02)# , 3(N14) 2(N01) , 1(N57) 2(N57) MUN~a1 DU TE SIG RAD~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2431. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006048) — 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.