Position in chronology
MS 2863/04
About this tablet
A small, heavily fragmented administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), likely originating from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It belongs to the very earliest horizon of writing in human history, when proto-cuneiform script was used not for literature but for institutional bookkeeping — recording quantities of commodities, named officials or categories of workers, and place-names. The surviving signs suggest entries involving a high-status title-holder (EN), a servant or Subarian worker (SZUBUR), a numerical notation, and a settlement or institutional locale (URU). Too damaged to reconstruct a complete transaction, but unmistakably part of the bureaucratic machinery of a large Uruk-period institution.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too broken to read as a continuous document, but the surviving entries appear to record institutional transactions or allocations. One line names a high official (an EN) alongside a servant or worker of Subarian origin, with a negation sign (NU) — perhaps indicating something was not issued or not present. Another line notes a place-marker (KI) alongside the sign for 'given' or 'deposited' (RU). A settlement or locale (URU) is recorded in isolation. The clearest numerical entry reads: 1 large unit plus 7 smaller units — the commodity they counted is lost. The rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X SZUBUR EN [ZATU624~b?] NU [...] , RU KI [...] , [...] , URU~a1 [...] , [...] 1(N14) 7(N01) [...] , 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 [...] , [...] X SZUBUR# EN~a# ZATU624~b#? NU [...] , RU KI [...] , [...] , URU~a1 [...] , [...] 1(N14) 7(N01)# [...] , X [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/04. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006170) — 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.