Position in chronology
MS 2695
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest written documents in human history — a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3100–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records counts of various commodities and persons or animals under named categories, the kind of institutional bookkeeping that drove the very invention of writing. The signs are pictographic and numerical, only partially decipherable by modern scholars; even the 'words' here are logograms whose phonetic values remain uncertain. It survives in the Schøyen Collection in Oslo and offers a rare window into the world's first bureaucracy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a ledger of some kind. Line by line it records small quantities — ones, twos, threes, fours — against categories that likely name goods, animals, officials, or people: something like 'goats and a man,' 'a reed-bird offering,' 'a messenger/envoy dispatch,' 'sheep — 45 total.' One entry records a large disbursement unit alongside what appear to be place or person names. The last legible entry tallies 45 sheep of a specific type. Much of the middle section is too damaged to read with confidence, and several signs remain undeciphered even by specialists.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2, MASZ(?) LU2 1, AN SZUBUR (mixed/blended?) 1, GI MUSZEN NA 2, SUKKAL RU 3(?), [...] SIG7(?) [...] [...], [...] 1, BA KISZIK(?) [...], 1(large unit) BA IB URI3 1(?), [...] X [...] 1, AN SZU2 4, SIG7 1, NA KI 2, GA2 DUR2 X [...], [...] KA 45(?), UDU(sheep) ZATU819 [...]
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)# , MASZ#? LU2 1(N01) , AN SZUBUR HI@g~a 1(N01) , GI MUSZEN NA~a 2(N01) , SUKKAL RU 3(N01)# [...] , SIG7# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , BA# KISZIK~a? , 1(N57) BA IB~a URI3~a 1(N01)# [...] , X [...] 1(N01) , AN SZU2 4(N01) , SIG7 1(N01) , NA~a KI 2(N01) , GA2~a2 DUR2 X [...] , [...] KA~a 4(N14) 5(N01) , UDU~a ZATU819# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2695. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006116) — 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.