Position in chronology
MS 2512
About this tablet
One of the earliest written documents in human history, this small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) is a proto-cuneiform administrative record — the kind of list-and-count document that represents the very beginning of writing. It appears to tally commodities such as salt, birds, and possibly a natron or alkali plant substance, each paired with numerical notations. Tablets like this were produced by temple or palace administrators in southern Mesopotamia to track incoming or outgoing goods. It is fragmentary and damaged, but even in this state it is a direct window onto the moment humans first committed accounts to clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries record several commodity categories — including birds, salt, and what may be a natron or alkali plant — each paired with numerical signs. One entry reads: one large unit (N57) of salt. Two further lines each record one basic unit (N01) against a category marker, though the surrounding context is too broken to read. Several lines at the top are entirely lost or too damaged to identify. The rest is missing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] ZATU659 [...] , [...] natron/alkali plant (NAGA) [...] , [...] bird(s) (MUŠEN) [+ damaged sign] [...] , [...] ZATU659(?) [blank] , 1(N57) salt (MUN) 1(N01) , IB [damaged] 1(N01)[?] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] ZATU659 [...] , [...] NAGA~a [...] , [...] MUSZEN# RAD~a [...] , [...] ZATU659? , 1(N57) MUN~a1 1(N01) , IB~a [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2512. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006080) — 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.