Position in chronology
MS 2863/27
About this tablet
A tiny, badly damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It records small quantities — mostly ones, twos, and a seven — of commodities or rations assigned to named individuals or categories, one of which may be salt. Tablets like this are among the very earliest written documents in human history, produced by temple administrators keeping track of goods distributed to workers or dependents. The writing here is so archaic that many signs cannot yet be read with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of small allocations: 1 unit to someone designated SZUBUR RAD~a; 7 units of what may be a purchase or priced commodity; 1 unit associated with a building or place. Further entries list 2 units each for parties whose names or categories are now lost. The final legible line mentions a quantity of what appears to be salt, measured in a larger unit. Much of the text is too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1 , X [...] 1 , SZUBUR RAD~a 7 , [commodity?] 1 , E2~b KI [...] 2 , [...] 2 , [...] 2 , X [...] 1 [...] , [...] [...] , [...] AL 2(N57) MUN~a1 [...]
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)# , X [...] 1(N01) , SZUBUR RAD~a# 7(N01) , SZAM2#? 1(N01) , E2~b# KI# [...] 2(N01)# , [...] 2(N01)# , [...] 2(N01)# , X [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] AL# 2(N57) MUN~a1# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2863/27. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006193) — 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.