Position in chronology
MS 2694
About this tablet
One of the oldest written documents in human history — a small, wedge-shaped clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of goods: fish, birds, goats, beer, timber, and what appear to be disbursements connected with a lord or high-priest and a festival. These early tablets are not yet fully deciphered — the signs stand at the very dawn of writing, when symbols were just beginning to record words rather than simple numbers alone. The surviving text shows the ancient accounting mind at work, tallying commodities against institutional or ceremonial needs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives reads as a tally of goods: 2 units connected with a lord/official and a festival; 1 unit each of fish, birds, and goat; 2 units of an uncertain commodity associated with AN; 3 units of beer or a similar drink; 2 units of DA/DU (purpose unclear); 9 units under an entry that may read NA KI NAB; 1 unit of RU; a larger unit plus 1 of something distributed (AN BA GI); 3 units of timber or wooden goods; and at least one further entry now lost. Several lines at the beginning and end are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 2 , EN (lord/high-priest) EZEN (festival) 1 , fish, bird, goat [...] , [...] 2 , [commodity] AN 3 , [commodity] beer/ale 2 , DA DU [...] , [...] 9 , NA KI [NAB?] 1 , RU 1(N14)+1 , AN BA GI 3 , AN wood/timber [...] 1 , [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 2(N01) , EN~a EZEN~b@t 1(N01) , KU6~a MUSZEN MASZ [...] , [...] 2(N01) , KU~b1 AN 3(N01) , KU~b1 KASZ~c 2(N01)# , DA~a DU [...] , [...] 9(N01) , NA~a KI NAB#? 1(N01) , RU 1(N14) 1(N01) , AN BA GI 3(N01) , AN GISZ3~b# [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2694. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006115) — 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.