Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 078
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–2900 BCE), acquired in the 1920s and now at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The tablet records quantities of commodities — likely agricultural or institutional goods — against a series of named categories or recipients, using the complex numerical notation characteristic of the earliest writing in the world. The signs SZUBUR (a term for a subordinate person or servant), NAGA (a plant or alkali substance), and what may be a compound sign for a settlement or storehouse suggest this is an accounting record from a large temple or palace economy. It is a rare survival from the very dawn of literacy, when writing was invented not for poetry or law but for tracking goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an accounting tablet, too damaged to read in full. What survives records several entries, each pairing a quantity with a commodity or category: one large unit and a sub-unit against a heading that may involve a sky-deity or institutional marker and the word for 'pressing' or 'grinding'; another entry with a servant or dependent (SZUBUR) and a plant product; and a line recording alkali or soap-plant (NAGA) associated with what appears to be a settlement or storehouse sign, with additional sub-units. Several lines are too broken to read. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N30~a) X [...] 1(N01) 1(N39~a) , 2(N57) 1(N30~a) AN GUM 1(N01) 1(N39~a) 1(N24) , 2(N57) 1(N30~a) [...] 1(N01) , 1(N30~a) SZUBUR BU~a 1(N39~a) 1(N24) , 2(N57) 1(N30~a) |URU×HI| NAGA 3(N57) 1(N01) , X UB [...] [...] SZITA~a1[?] [...] 1(N34)[?] 2(N01)[?] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 1(N30~a)# X [...] 1(N01)# 1(N39~a) , 2(N57) 1(N30~a) AN# GUM~b# 1(N01)# 1(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , 2(N57)# 1(N30~a)# [...] 1(N01)# , 1(N30~a)# SZUBUR# BU~a# 1(N39~a)# 1(N24)# , 2(N57)# 1(N30~a)# |URU~a1xHI@g~a|#? NAGA~a# 3(N57)# 1(N01)# , X UB# [...] , [...] SZITA~a1#? [...] 1(N34)#? 2(N01)#? [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 078. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005145) — 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.