Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 135
About this tablet
A highly fragmentary proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), now held in three joining pieces at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It records quantities of goods — including at least one vessel type, a mixed or compound commodity marked by an unidentified sign, and possibly oil or fat — alongside formulas that likely indicate receipt or disbursement. The tablet belongs to the very earliest layer of writing in human history, when Mesopotamian administrators were inventing the cuneiform script to track temple or palace economies. Many of the sign combinations remain only partially deciphered, making this a document at the frontier of what modern scholarship can read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too broken to reconstruct as continuous text, but what survives reads as a ledger of quantities and commodities: a large numerical entry (involving several different number signs) associated with an unidentified mixed or compounded item; single-unit entries linked to a jar or vessel type; a further single-unit entry against an unknown commodity; a total or subtotal of four units under what may be a 'received' or 'in the hand of' formula; an entry for an unidentified commodity (ZATU753); a quantity involving a large-value number sign; and a line recording a 'new' or 'fresh' quantity — two units of something — possibly oil, given or deposited, with a body/skin or disbursement marker. The remaining lines are too damaged or broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2(N05) 2(N42~a) 1(N25) , |ZATU714xHI@g~a| [...] [...] 1(N01) , |DUG~cx1(N57)| [...] 1(N01) , [...] [...] 1(N01) , [...] X 4(N01)# , SZU2# [...] , ZATU753 [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] 1(N52) , , |NI~a.RU|# GIBIL 2(N57) SU~a# [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# [...] ,
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 2(N05) 2(N42~a) 1(N25) , |ZATU714xHI@g~a| [...] [...] 1(N01) , |DUG~cx1(N57)| [...] 1(N01) , [...] [...] 1(N01) , [...] X 4(N01)# , SZU2# [...] , ZATU753 [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X [...] 1(N52) , , |NI~a.RU|# GIBIL 2(N57) SU~a# [...] , [...] [...] 1(N01)# [...] ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 135. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005202) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.