Position in chronology
MS 2690
About this tablet
A small, heavily fragmented administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), almost certainly from a southern Mesopotamian city such as Umma. It records quantities of textiles — linen cloth and garments — alongside what appear to be rations or disbursements connected to a temple administrator and a travel or agricultural context. This is among the very earliest writing in human history: not literature, but the bookkeeping of a complex economy, inscribed in proto-cuneiform before the Sumerian language was fully represented in script. Its interest lies in showing how administration and literacy arose together in ancient Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving lines record allocations of textiles: one unit of linen cloth, two units (or a large batch) of a female category with rations issued, overseen by a city temple official. Another entry notes one garment and a second single-unit ration connected to a road or journey and a plowing category. Several lines at the top and bottom are too broken to read. This appears to be a routine institutional record of goods going out — cloth and provisions distributed under temple authority.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [garment] [...] , [...] 1 , linen cloth 2 , 1(×60?) female [animal/person] — ration-portion , city — temple administrator [...] , [garment] [...] , [...] 1 , [...] 1 , 1 [...] — ration-portion , road/journey — plow [category] [...] , [...] X
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] TUG2~a# [...] , [...] 1(N01) , GADA~a# 2(N01) , 1(N57) SAL BAR , URU~a1 SANGA~a [...] , TUG2~a# [...] , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] 1(N01)# , 1(N01)# [...] BAR# , KASKAL APIN~a [...] , [...] X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2690. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006111) — 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.