Position in chronology
MS 2900/34
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform clay tablet from the late Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), likely originating from the city of Umma in southern Iraq. It appears to be an administrative accounting record — one of the earliest forms of writing ever used — tracking quantities of animals (oxen, goats) and possibly commodities such as beer. Tablets like this were the bookkeeping tools of early Mesopotamian temple or palace institutions, recording the movement of livestock and goods before any narrative or literary writing existed. Its survival, even in this fragmentary state, offers a direct window into the bureaucratic origins of writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too broken to read as a continuous text, but the surviving entries record something like: one unit of [commodity], associated with a dark/black designation, an ox, and beer. Further lines note 'DU' and 'NI' — probably movement or fat/oil — and another single unit linked to a head-count or chief designation under the sky-sign AN. One entry mentions a goat. The rest of the lines are lost or too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] 1 (unit), GI6 OX BEER [vessel?] BELLY/INTERIOR [...] , [...] DU NI [...] , [...] X 1 (unit), SAG-SZU AN [...] , [...] [...] , [...] GOAT [...]
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)# , GI6 GU4# KASZ~b#? SZA3~a1 [...] , [...] DU@g# NI~a [...] , [...] X 1(N01) , SAGSZU AN [...] , [...] [...] , [...] UD5~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/34. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006242) — 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.