Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 087
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), now held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It records quantities of commodities — most likely including beer and possibly reed — using the numerical notation system that preceded true writing in Mesopotamia. The tablet is broken into several pieces and heavily damaged, making a complete reading impossible, but the surviving signs show the systematic numerical entries typical of early institutional record-keeping. It is a remarkable witness to the very dawn of written administration, when temples or large households in southern Iraq first began tracking goods in clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this very early accounting record lists quantities of various commodities — beer and possibly reeds among them — under one or more institutional headings. The numbers are entered in a complex system where different signs stand for different orders of magnitude. Much of the text is broken away or too damaged to read. The last legible lines record smaller quantities alongside signs that may identify a person, institution, or product category. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] reed? beer |U4×1(N57)| [...] 1(N60) 2(N52) [...] , 2(N14) 6(N01)# [...] , [...] X [...] , X [...] , reed? [...] 1(N47) 5(N20) 3(N05) , 5(N18) 2(N03) , 2(N01)#? [...] , [...] 1(N14) 2(N01) , [sign ME~a] [...] 4(N01) , [ZATU753] [...] , [KID~b] [...] , [...] |NI~a.RU|# [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] GI# KASZ~b |U4x1(N57)| [...] 1(N60) 2(N52) [...] , 2(N14) 6(N01)# [...] , [...] X [...] , X [...] , GI# [...] 1(N47) 5(N20) 3(N05) , 5(N18) 2(N03) , 2(N01)#? [...] , [...] 1(N14) 2(N01) , ME~a [...] 4(N01) , ZATU753 [...] , KID~b [...] , [...] |NI~a.RU|# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 087. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005154) — 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.