MS 4588/4

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P274474

About this tablet

A small, heavily fragmented proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), almost certainly recording quantities of barley or other commodities under a system of numerical notation that predates the development of true writing. Only a handful of signs survive legibly — a barley sign, a vessel sign, and a few numerals — with the bulk of the text broken away. Tablets like this are among the very oldest written documents in human history, used by early temple administrators in southern Mesopotamia to track the movement of grain and goods. Despite its fragmentary state, it represents the earliest phase of the cuneiform writing tradition.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

What survives reads as a commodity account — at least one entry records a quantity of barley alongside a sign that may denote a specific processing or transfer term. One line registers '1' unit and '3' of a secondary measure. Several more lines once listed additional goods or quantities, but they are too damaged to read. The rest is lost.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

[N] , [...] barley BU~a 1(N01) 3(N39~a) , [...] [N] , [...] [N] , X [...] N? , vessel? X X [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] X

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

[N] , [...] SZE~a BU~a
1(N01) 3(N39~a) , [...]
[N] , [...]
[N] , X [...]
N? , DUG~c? X X [...]
1(N01) [...] , [...]
[...] , [...] X
[...] , [...] X
[...] , [...] X

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4588/4. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P274474) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).

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Related sources

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