Position in chronology
MS 2507
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, dating to roughly 3200–3000 BCE, likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of commodities or institutional allocations distributed to or received by several named entities or offices, including what appears to be a storehouse and a high official (EN). Proto-cuneiform is not yet a fully phonetic script; it records numbers, commodity signs, and institutional labels in a shorthand that scribes and administrators could decode but that resists full linguistic translation. The tablet is historically remarkable because it represents writing at its very birth — a technology invented specifically to manage the complex economy of the world's first cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of commodity disbursements or allocations across several entries: approximately four large units assigned to a storehouse under one official; three large units to another office; one unit each to two further departments or individuals, one associated with a settlement and one with a high lord's office. A further entry notes one smaller unit linked to clay or tablet material, and one unit to a storehouse with a specific commodity marker. The largest single entry — two high-order units plus three mid-order units — is tied to a sign-combination that cannot be fully read. The final entry is too damaged to recover. The rest of the text is lost or broken.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4(N15)? , storehouse — PA~a 3(N15)? , ISZ~b — RAD~a 1(N15)? , SZU TUR 1(N15)? , AN — URU~a1 [...] , [...] EN~a [damaged] [...] 1(N14) , clay/tablet (IM~a) 1(N14) , storehouse — NAGA~a SI 2(N50) 3(N14) , |HIx1(N57)| ZATU756 1(N45)# 6(N14) , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(N15)? , E2~a PA~a 3(N15)? , ISZ~b RAD~a 1(N15)? , SZU TUR 1(N15)? , AN URU~a1 [...] , [...] EN~a# [...] 1(N14) , IM~a 1(N14) , E2~a# NAGA~a SI 2(N50) 3(N14) , |HIx1(N57)| ZATU756 1(N45)# 6(N14) , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2507. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006075) — 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.