Position in chronology
MS 2862/16
About this tablet
This tiny, heavily worn clay tablet fragment belongs to the very earliest phase of writing — the proto-cuneiform period in southern Mesopotamia, roughly 3300–3000 BCE, probably from the city of Umma. It is an administrative accounting record, the kind that temple or household managers used to track rations and commodities: beer, grain products, birds, and possibly goats appear alongside basic numerical impressions. Tablets like this are among the first written documents in human history, invented not for literature or religion but for bookkeeping. Its extreme age and the archaic sign forms mean many entries remain only partially deciphered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The legible lines record a series of single-unit allocations against various commodities: one unit of beer with a larger numerical quantity noted alongside; one entry for what may be a grain cake or cereal product; one for a head-covering or vessel type (SAGŠU); one combining beer, birds, a goat, and an oil or fat designation; and a further entry pairing the sky/divine determinative with an oil or fat sign. The first three lines and several others are too broken to read. The reverse of the tablet is blank or uninscribed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X [...] , [...] (building/house sign) [...] , X AN GUB3~a 1 , beer (KAŠ~c) [+] 1(N04) AN , TE ŠUBUR 1 , GUG2 (grain product?) [+] NI~a [...] , [...] 1(?) , ŠA3~a1(?) [...] 1 , AN SAGŠU 1 , beer (KAŠ~c) bird(s) goat AN NI~a 1 , AN NI~a X [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] X [...] , [...] E2~b [...] , X AN GUB3~a 1(N01) , KASZ~c# 1(N04) AN , TE SZUBUR 1(N01) , GUG2 NI~a [...] , [...] 1(N01)# , SZA3~a1# [...] 1(N01) , AN SAGSZU 1(N01) , KASZ~c MUSZEN MASZ AN NI~a 1(N01) , AN NI~a X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2862/16. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006163) — 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.