Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 113
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), most likely from Jemdet Nasr in southern Iraq, now held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It records quantities of commodities — including what appear to be beer vessels, sheep, reed products, and possibly rations — in the characteristic numerical notation of the world's earliest writing system. The tablet almost certainly belonged to a temple or palace storehouse administration, tracking disbursements or receipts of goods under named officials. Because proto-cuneiform cannot yet be fully 'read' in the linguistic sense, many entries remain opaque beyond their numerical quantities and commodity signs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is too damaged and fragmentary for a fully coherent modern paraphrase, but the readable portions record something like the following: a number of jars of beer, a large quantity of sheep (with a substantial numerical total spread across several registers), a receipt or hand-delivery entry, some reed mats marked as disbursed, and further entries involving reed goods counted in large units against a sign that may indicate days or a date formula. Several lines are entirely lost, and the commodity context for most numbers cannot be confirmed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] [...] , [...] vessel (DUG) beer? (KASZ) [...] 2(N20) 1(N05) , EN X [...] [...] , [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...] , sheep (UDU) 3(N52) 1(N38) 2(N21) , [...] 2(N01) , hand/receipt (SZU2) [X ...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , mat/reed-mat (KID) half/disbursed (BAR) [...] 1(N51) 2(N14) , |6(N57).GAR| , [X] reed (GI) [...] , |U4×5(N57)| reed (GI) [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] DUG~a# KASZ~a? [...] 2(N20)# 1(N05)# , EN~a X [...] [...] , [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...] , UDU~a# 3(N52) 1(N38) 2(N21) , [...] 2(N01)# , SZU2# X [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , KID~b# BAR# [...] 1(N51)# 2(N14)# , |6(N57).GAR|# , X GI# [...] , |U4x5(N57)| GI# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 113. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005180) — 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.