Position in chronology
MS 2863/05
About this tablet
One of the earliest administrative records in human history, this small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) is a damaged accounting document recording quantities of workers, plant/fodder, and sheep. The numerical signs are impressed circles and wedges, not yet the fully developed cuneiform of later periods — this is writing in its infancy, created to track institutional resources. The possible provenance is the city of Umma in southern Iraq, a major administrative center. Its interest lies in showing how bureaucracy and literacy were invented together: the very first 'writing' was bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too damaged at the top and bottom to read fully. What survives records: 1 large unit (likely 60) plus 5 medium units of male workers, apparently of highland or foreign origin, associated with plant fodder [the rest of that line is lost]; then 4 medium units plus 5 single units of something [that line is also broken]; then — near the bottom — 3 large circle units plus 5 single units of sheep. The remaining lines are too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1(N50) 5(N14) , male workers (from the) highland/foreign land, plant/fodder [...] 4(N14) 5(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] 3(N34) 5(N01) , sheep [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N50)# 5(N14)# , ERIM~a KUR~a# U2~b [...] 4(N14) 5(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] 3(N34)# 5(N01)# , UDU~a [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/05. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006171) — 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.