Position in chronology
MS 2782/08
About this tablet
A small, badly damaged clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), possibly from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It appears to be an early administrative or accounting record — one of the oldest types of written document ever produced by human beings. The surviving legible line records a single numeral alongside a cluster of signs whose meanings remain uncertain even to specialists, a reminder of how early in the history of writing this object sits. Most of the tablet's text is lost to breakage and surface erosion, leaving only tantalising fragments of what was once a structured entry.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Most of this record is too broken to read. What survives shows at least one entry: a count of '1' unit alongside a group of signs — DAR, NI, DA — whose exact meaning is unclear, followed by what may be a disbursement notation (BA). Several other lines appear to have followed, recording further entries, but these are almost entirely lost. The reverse of the tablet is blank or too worn to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] (sign uncertain) 1(N01) , DAR~a NI~a DA~a , BA [...] , [...] DI (sign uncertain) RAD~a [...] , [...] (sign uncertain) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , (sign uncertain) [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X 1(N01) , DAR~a NI~a DA~a , BA [...] , [...] DI X RAD~a [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/08. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006128) — 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.