Position in chronology
MS 2863/23
About this tablet
One of the oldest types of written documents in human history — an administrative accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), almost certainly from southern Iraq. Its two-column format is typical of proto-cuneiform records: quantities in the left column, commodity or personnel signs in the right. The tablet is heavily damaged, and many signs cannot be read securely, but the surviving entries appear to record disbursements or allocations of goods, animals, or rations under named categories. Even in this fragmentary state it offers a glimpse into the earliest bureaucratic writing, where notation served accountancy before it served narrative.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet reads like a damaged ledger page: one entry records something associated with a place or title 'IB URI3'; another notes three units of an unspecified commodity; another records a large quantity (perhaps 60 units) distributed or allocated — 'SIG' may indicate quality; further lines give single or double units against signs whose meaning is lost. One line notes a single unit of a plant or herb (U2) together with 'NUNUZ' (eggs? seed?), followed by the titles or categories NAM2 and KAB. The remaining lines are too broken to read. In short: a record of small quantities of various goods being counted and disbursed, most of whose specific items we can no longer identify.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] IB~a URI3~a 3(N01) , [...] X [...] , [...] 1(N57) BA X SIG 2(N01) , X 1(N01)[?] [...] , NUN~a[?] [...] [...] , [...] DA~a[?] 1(N01) , U2~b NUNUZ~a1 , NAM2[?] KAB[?] [...] , [...] IB~a[?] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X NI~a MA [...] , [...] A[?] GA2~a2[?] [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] IB~a URI3~a 3(N01) , [...] X [...] , [...] 1(N57) BA X SIG 2(N01) , X 1(N01)# [...] , NUN~a#? [...] [...] , [...] DA~a# 1(N01) , U2~b NUNUZ~a1 , NAM2# KAB# [...] , [...] IB~a# [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X NI~a MA [...] , [...] A#? GA2~a2#? [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/23. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006189) — 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.