Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 161
About this tablet
This is an archaic Uruk-period administrative tablet from Jemdet Nasr (ancient southern Iraq), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the earliest writing in human history. It records quantities of several commodities, including what appears to be orchard fruit (likely apples or a similar produce), containers of some kind, and possibly oil or other goods, perhaps destined for or originating from the city of Uruk. The tablet is damaged, with the right side of the obverse and much of the reverse badly broken, leaving several entries without legible quantities or commodity identifiers. Its interest lies in how it captures the very dawn of record-keeping: a scribe tallying goods in a system where signs are still closer to pictures than to a phonetic script.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a short list of goods with quantities: 1 unit of something called MA, 4 units of orchard fruit (apples or similar), 2 units of MA combined with an unidentified commodity, 1 unit stored in a container or storehouse, and 1 more entry whose commodity is now lost. The remaining lines — recording what may be oil or a deposited good, an unidentified item, something involving liquid and a graded quality, and a reference to the city of Uruk — are too damaged to give quantities. The rest is largely broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) [unit], MA 4(N01) [units], HASZHUR (apple/orchard fruit) 2(N01) [units], MA ZATU735~b 1(N01) [unit], |GA2~a1×GESZTU~c3| (storehouse/container + ear?) 1(N01) [unit], [...] [commodity lost] [quantity lost], |NI~a.RU| (oil/fat — deposited/delivered?) [quantity lost], [...] MUSZ3~a (uncertain commodity) [quantity lost], [...] A LAM~b (water/liquid + grade/quality?) [quantity lost], UNUG~a (Uruk — institution or destination?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01)# , MA# 4(N01)# , HASZHUR 2(N01)# , MA ZATU735~b? 1(N01) , |GA2~a1xGESZTU~c3|# 1(N01)# [...] , [...] , |NI~a.RU| , [...] MUSZ3~a#? , [...] A LAM~b , UNUG~a#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 161. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005228) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.