Position in chronology
MS 2863/17
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest administrative records known to humanity — a small clay tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), likely from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records a livestock count: ewes, nanny-goats, rams of different categories, a wether, and oxen, tallied using the proto-cuneiform numeral system of impressed circles. The reverse face is heavily damaged and nearly unreadable, while the obverse preserves the animal register clearly. Tablets like this are the very beginning of writing — not literature or law, but the practical bookkeeping of an ancient temple or estate.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The legible entries list: 2 ewes; 22 nanny-goats; 1 ram; 6 rams (of a specific type); 1 castrated ram; 1 goat; and [33] sheep. The final lines record something involving the receipt or transfer of oxen at a particular place, but those lines are too damaged to read fully. The reverse of the tablet is almost entirely destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 2 ewes 22 she-goats (nanny-goats) 1 ram (UTUA) 6 rams (NUN~b type) 1 wether (castrated ram) 1 goat (MASZ2) [3]3 sheep [...] , hands/receipt — ox , [received/disbursed] — MUNSZUB — ox — place [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 2(N01) U8 2(N14) 2(N01) UD5~a 1(N01) UTUA~a 6(N01) NUN~b 1(N01) UDUNITA~a 1(N01) MASZ2 [3(N14)] 3(N01)# , UDU~a [...] , SZU GU4 , KU~b1# MUNSZUB~b GU4# KI [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/17. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006183) — 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.