Position in chronology
MS 2900/19
About this tablet
This is a small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), almost certainly from the scribal tradition of southern Mesopotamia — possibly ancient Umma. It records quantities of agricultural commodities and animals: plows (or plow-related labor/land categories), birds, and sheep, with numerical notations in the basic round-impression counting system. Tablets like this are among the very earliest written records in human history, produced by temple administrators tracking the movement and distribution of goods. Despite its fragmentary state, it is a direct witness to the invention of writing as an accounting tool.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is badly broken at top and bottom, but the surviving entries record small counts of goods: one plow-related item, two more plow entries, one bird associated with the AN sign, one sheep, and what appears to be a disbursement entry involving a plow. Most entries carry the numeral '1' or '2.' Several lines are too damaged to read. The final legible entry seems to record a distribution or allotment of something connected to plowing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X 1 , X , plow 2 , plow X 1 , bird(s) [under/with] AN 1 , sheep X X 1 , [NI] X [SA] , [...] [...] 2 , [...] , [...] [...] 1 , [...] , HI plow [disbursement/allotment] , [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] X 1(N01)# , X , APIN~a# 2(N01)# , APIN~a# X 1(N01)# , AN# MUSZEN# A 1(N01) , UDU~a X X 1(N01) , NI~a X SA~c# , [...] [...] 2(N01)# , [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# , [...] , HI APIN~a BA# , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/19. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006227) — 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.