Position in chronology
MS 2900/25
About this tablet
A small, heavily worn proto-cuneiform tablet from the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), probably from the Umma region of southern Iraq. It records quantities — each marked with the basic unit numeral — assigned to or associated with officials or commodity categories, including what appears to be a high-status title (EN) and a sign for eggs, seed, or a similar commodity (NUNUZ). Tablets like this are among the very earliest written documents in human history, produced by temple administrators who needed to track goods moving in and out of institutional storehouses. The object is tiny and fragmentary, but it represents the birth of literacy: writing invented not for poetry or religion, but for counting things.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several entries, each consisting of a single unit count followed by a commodity or recipient designation. One entry lists 1 unit associated with what appears to be a lord or high official (EN), with another sign too damaged to read. Further single-unit entries follow, most too broken to identify. The final legible entry, on what is likely the reverse, records a quantity against the signs for AB and NUNUZ — probably referring to eggs or seed associated with a particular animal category or enclosure. Much of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1(N01) , EN [X] [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] (blank) , AB NUNUZ
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)# , EN~a# X [...] 1(N01) , X [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] , AB~b NUNUZ~a2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/25. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006233) — 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.