Position in chronology
MS 2863/14
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet fragment from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), almost certainly an early accounting document recording quantities of commodities — including beer, wooden goods, copper, and possibly labor — under institutional oversight. It belongs to the very earliest phase of writing in human history, when Sumerian scribes in southern Iraq were just developing cuneiform as a tool for managing temple and palace resources. The object label visible in the photograph ('H/K 987 SW') is a field or collection number. The tablet is heavily fragmented, and many entries cannot be read with confidence, but the surviving signs are consistent with the kind of proto-cuneiform ledger format typical of Uruk-period Umma.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this ledger reads roughly as follows: one unit of an oily or fatty substance associated with a wood product; one unit of [an unidentified commodity] and beer; [some entries lost]; two units involving a mountain product, a plant or herb, and copper (recorded twice); two more units [broken]; three units of male workers alongside what may be a 'lion' or fierce-animal designation; [further entries too damaged to read]; and finally a closing or summary entry involving a storage unit or institutional building. Most lines are too broken to reconstruct fully.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1(N01) , NI [GISZ-wood product] 1(N01) , [ZATU694] beer [...] , [...] beer [...] 2(N01) , KUR-mountain(?) herb/plant(?) copper copper 2(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] 3(N01) , male workers lion(?) 1(N01) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] mouth/opening(?) [...] , [...] 3(N57)? [EN2.E2]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N01) , NI~a GISZ3~b# 1(N01)# , ZATU694~c KASZ~c# [...] , [...] KASZ~c# X 2(N01) , KUR~a U2~b URUDU~a URUDU~a 2(N01) , X [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] 3(N01) , ERIM~a PIRIG~b1? 1(N01)# [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] KA~a#? [...] , [...] 3(N57)? |EN2.E2~b|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/14. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006180) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.