Position in chronology
MS 2520
About this tablet
One of the earliest administrative tablets in human history, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of a commodity — most likely wool or a textile product — using proto-cuneiform signs that stand at the very threshold of writing's invention. The tablet is heavily fragmented, with most lines broken away, but the surviving entries follow the standard Uruk bookkeeping format: a numerical notation paired with a commodity sign. These small clay tablets were the ancient world's first spreadsheets, created by temple administrators to track the movement of goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Most of this tablet is broken and unreadable. What survives shows at least one entry recording a quantity — roughly one unit — of what appears to be wool or a fine textile, noted alongside an uncertain commodity sign. The surrounding lines are too damaged to recover. The reverse face is blank or effaced. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] [...] SIG RAD~a [...] [...] [...] 1(N02)# [...] X [...] X [...] [...] [...] X [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] , [...] SIG RAD~a [...] [...] , [...] 1(N02)# [...] , X [...] X [...] , [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2520. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006088) — 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.