Position in chronology
MS 2782/16
About this tablet
A small, lenticular proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), tentatively attributed to Umma in southern Iraq. It records quantities of several commodities or institutional categories — possibly including reed, honey or syrup, and a reference to a storehouse or institutional building — under a tally system that predates true writing by a narrow margin. The tablet is too fragmentary and the signs too worn to reconstruct a complete transaction, but it belongs to the earliest stratum of human record-keeping: bureaucrats tracking goods before a full writing system existed. Its lentil shape is characteristic of small field or warehouse tallies from this horizon.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a short list of goods with their quantities. Three units of what may be reed or honey-syrup; two units of an item associated with a storehouse; two units of a commodity marked 'small'; one unit of another item whose nature is unclear. A larger numerical entry appears at the end, but the tablet breaks off before we can read what it tallied. The first and last lines are too damaged to recover.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] |LAGAB~a×SI|(?) 3(N01) , LAL2~a(?) GI(?) 2(N01) , 4(N57) ZATU759 E2~a 2(N01) , NI~a TUR 1(N01) , ISZ~b BU~a 1(N14) 3(N08)(?) [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] |LAGAB~axSI|#? 3(N01) , LAL2~a# GI# 2(N01) , 4(N57) ZATU759 E2~a 2(N01) , NI~a TUR 1(N01) , ISZ~b BU~a 1(N14) 3(N08)# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2782/16. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006136) — 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.