Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 110
About this tablet
A heavily damaged proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), now held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It records a series of numerical entries associated with commodities that likely include livestock (sheep/goats: UDU, MASZ) and possibly land (GAN2), alongside damaged or unread sign groups. Tablets like this are among the earliest written documents in human history — bureaucratic tools invented not for literature or religion, but for tracking economic resources across a complex early urban society. The large totals in the final line (9 large units + 3 medium + 3 small) suggest a summary or balancing entry for a substantial quantity of animals or agricultural produce.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too damaged for a fluent continuous paraphrase, but what survives reads as a series of quantity entries: roughly '[large number] + 19 units — [cattle/livestock establishment] [movement/delivery] [broken]'; then '[large number] + 30 units — [broken]'; then several broken intermediate lines recording 22 units, 11 units, and further damaged entries; then '[large number] + 14 units — [broken] — reeds (GI)'; then a larger combined measure — [broken commodity]; and finally the most legible line: 9 large units + 33 medium-and-small units — goats (MASZ), fields or land (GAN2), sheep (UDU) — [rest broken]. The surviving lines are essentially a ledger: quantities of animals and perhaps land or reed, tallied under headings now mostly lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N34) [...] 1(N14) 9(N01), AB~b DU X [...] 1(N34) 3(N14), X [...] [...], [...] 2(N14) 2(N01) [...], [...] 1(N14) 1(N01) [...], [...] [...], [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...], [...] GI 1(N35) 2(N15) 3(N02), X [...] 9(N34) 3(N14) 3(N01), MASZ GAN2 UDU [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 1(N34)# [...] 1(N14)# 9(N01)# , AB~b# DU# X [...] 1(N34)# 3(N14)# , X [...] [...] , [...] 2(N14)# 2(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N14)# 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...] , [...] GI 1(N35) 2(N15) 3(N02) , X [...] 9(N34)# 3(N14)# 3(N01)# , MASZ GAN2 UDU~a# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 110. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005177) — 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.