Position in chronology
MS 2782/01
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest written documents in human history — a small administrative tablet from the late Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE, probably from the southern Mesopotamian city of Umma. Each line records a single unit (one round-impression numeral, 'N01') alongside a cluster of sign-groups that likely name officials, commodities such as beer, and perhaps institutional roles like a 'runner' or messenger. The tablet is too damaged and fragmentary to reconstruct a single coherent transaction, but the signs point to the kind of temple or palace bookkeeping that drove the invention of writing itself — tracking who received what from a central institution. Its survival in multiple fragments, now reassembled, is a reminder of how precarious our knowledge of the very earliest literacy really is.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each surviving line records a count of one unit alongside a set of identifiers — an official title (something like 'lord' or 'high priest'), a person's designation, commodities including beer, and what appears to be a messenger or foot-runner. One entry notes a large quantity against a senior official's name alongside signs for 'lord,' a quality marker, and a plant or offering term. Several lines are too broken to read. The overall sense is a list of single allocations or assignments — one unit each — distributed to or associated with a series of named roles and goods within what was probably a large institutional household.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) [unit] — [city sign / UNUG] 1(N01) [unit] — EN-official, head (SAG), sky/An 1(N01) [unit] — ZI-sign, bird (MUŠEN), beer (KAŠ) 1(N01) [unit] — hand (ŠU), [complex sign |GIŠxŠU2|], foot/runner (GIR3) 1(N01) [unit] — ŠA, TAK4, water/liquid (A) [...] — [sign] [...] 1(N01) [unit] — [...] 1(N01) [unit] — [sign] [...] 1(N01) [unit] — PAP, hand (ŠU), [...] 1(N01) [unit] — [...] 1(N01) [unit] — [...] [...] — [...] [...] 1(N01) [unit] — 1(N57) [large unit], [sign] [...] — EN-official, KAL, BU, [sign] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01)# , UNUG~a 1(N01) , EN~a SAG AN 1(N01) , ZI~a MUSZEN KASZ~c 1(N01) , SZU |GISZxSZU2~a| GIR3@g~b# 1(N01) , SZA# TAK4~a A [...] , X [...] 1(N01)# , [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01) , PAP~a# SZU# [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , 1(N57) X [...] , EN~a# KAL~b2 BU~a X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006121) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.