Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 068
About this tablet
One of the world's oldest administrative records, this small clay tablet from the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE) is an institutional account listing commodities, persons, or livestock under a series of sign-categories, each prefixed by the numeral '1'. Because the script is proto-cuneiform — the earliest stage of writing, still only partially deciphered — the exact meaning of many signs cannot be pinned down with certainty. What is clear is that a temple or palace administrator pressed this record into wet clay to track the movement or allocation of goods across named categories, including what may be birds, storage facilities (KISAL = courtyard/storehouse?), and personnel groupings (ERIM = troops/workers?). The tablet is now held at the Oriental Institute in Chicago and belongs to the MSVO corpus of early Mesopotamian administrative tablets.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records a series of single-unit entries, each assigned to a different category or official designation: one entry for a 'hand' compound sign, one for a grain-related disbursement, one for a courtyard or storehouse, one for a lord and a kinsman, several entries pairing a unit-count with what appear to be institutional or commodity labels (including sky/An, a neck or rope sign, and bird), and one entry for troops or a workforce group associated with reeds. The final lines, partially damaged, record a larger quantity — apparently fourteen units — assigned to a distribution or disbursement category. The last line is too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01), |SZU&SZU| 1(N01), BU~b, grain(?), RU 1(N01), SI, KISAL~b1 1(N01), EN~a, PAP~a 1(N01), 3(N57) 1(N01), AN, 3(N57) 1(N01), GU, 3(N57) 1(N01), SI, TUN3~a, SI, KISAL~b1 1(N01), MUSZEN (bird), NA~a, GI, ERIM~a 1(N01), [damaged sign], ERIM~a[?] [blank?], UB, AB~a[?], [...] 1(N14)[?] 4(N01)[?], UB, AB~a, BAR [...], SUG5[?], DU@g[?]
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)# , |SZU&SZU| 1(N01) , BU~b SZE3 RU 1(N01) , SI KISAL~b1 1(N01) , EN~a PAP~a 1(N01) , 3(N57) 1(N01) , AN 3(N57) 1(N01) , GU 3(N57) 1(N01) , SI TUN3~a SI KISAL~b1 1(N01) , MUSZEN NA~a GI ERIM~a 1(N01) , X ERIM~a# , UB AB~a# [...] 1(N14)# 4(N01)# , UB AB~a BAR , [...] SUG5# DU@g?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 068. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (P005135) — 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
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.