Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 001
About this tablet
This is one of the oldest administrative records in human history, dating to the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE) and written in the earliest known script — proto-cuneiform — before Sumerian or any other language had been fully rendered in writing. The tablet, now held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, records quantities of agricultural land (fields) associated with grain, labor (male and female workers), and plowing operations, probably belonging to a large institutional estate. The numerical signs pressed into the clay with a round stylus represent a sophisticated accounting system, tracking land areas alongside the people and tools needed to work them. It is a snapshot of the very beginning of bureaucratic record-keeping, showing that writing itself was invented not for poetry or religion, but for managing grain and labor.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a date or heading referencing a named location or official. The first entry records a large area of fields assigned to grain (likely barley). The second entry lists a quantity of male and female laborers. The third entry gives another substantial field area linked to a place near water. The final line presents a grand total: a very large combined field area connected with plowing operations at the same location. The specific quantities in several entries are damaged and only partially legible; the rest cannot be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineHeader/date formula: [Day] ... NI~a.RU, water(?), place, BU~a, AB~a [1(N45)] 5(N50) [n] , [Field — grain (barley)] 1(N50) [2(N14) n] , [Male laborers — women] 3(N45) 2(N50) 5(N14) [n] , [Field — place, water] 5(N45) 3(N50) 4(N14) 3(N01) , Total field — BU~a, place, NI~a.RU, AB~a, plow
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
, U4 |NI~a.RU| A#? KI BU~a AB~a# [1(N45)] 5(N50)# [N] , [GAN2 |SZE~a&SZE~a|] 1(N50)# [2(N14) n] , [GURUSZ~a SAL] 3(N45)# 2(N50)# 5(N14)# [N] , [GAN2 KI A] 5(N45)# 3(N50)# 4(N14)# 3(N01) , LAGAB~b GAN2 BU~a KI |NI~a.RU| AB~a APIN~a#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 001. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005068) — 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.