Position in chronology
MS 2506
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest administrative tablets in the world, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), possibly from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of livestock — sheep, goats — alongside commodities such as barley, beer, and bread rations, likely disbursements from a temple or palace storehouse. The final line may preserve a personal name or an institutional heading. Tablets like this represent the very birth of writing: not literature, but the bookkeeping that first demanded a permanent record system.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The record lists 20 ewes and some female persons or female animals, 3 rams, and 2 goats. Ten units of something are recorded as consumed or disbursed. Three measures of barley, five more ewes, and one measure of beer follow. Twenty ration-portions of bread are allocated. One entry mentions a weapon or mace together with some kind of fat or oil. The final line — four signs grouped together — may be a name or an official's title; it is too damaged and archaic to read with certainty.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine20 ewes (female sheep) [and/with] females (women/female persons?) 3 rams (male sheep) 2 goats [...] [...] hand/delivery? 10 [animals/units]: consumed, [by/via] RAD? 3 [units of] barley 5 ewes 1 [unit of] beer 20 [units of] bread/ration allocation 1 [unit]: weapon/mace + fat/oil? [signs:] MUSZ3 + ME + LAL3 + SZUR2 [— meaning unclear; possibly a personal name or institutional label]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N14) , UDU~a , SAL 3(N01) , UDUNITA~a 2(N01)# , MASZ2 [...] , [...] SZU# 1(N14) , GU7 RAD~a? 3(N01) , SZE~a 5(N01) , UDU~a 1(N01) , KASZ~b 2(N14) , GAR 1(N01) , SZITA~a1 NI~a , MUSZ3~a ME~a LAL3~b SZUR2~a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2506. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006074) — 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.