Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 201
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), probably from the site of Jemdet Nasr in southern Iraq. Each surviving line records a single numerical unit — the round impressed sign N01, equivalent to '1' — followed by a commodity or transaction label, most of which are now lost to surface damage and breakage. The final legible line appears to reference an ox or bull (GU4), possibly with qualifiers relating to horns (SI) and an unidentified sign. This is the routine paperwork of one of the world's earliest bureaucracies: a tally of items counted or disbursed by an anonymous temple administrator, at the very dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Five entries, each recording a single unit of something — the commodity in most lines is too broken to read. The last surviving line records one unit of something involving an ox or bull, with what may be a horn or capacity notation alongside it. The rest of the text is lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01), GIR3~c[?] [...] 1(N01), [...] 1(N01) [...], [...] 1(N01)[?] [...], [...] 1(N01)[?] [...], [...] [...], [...] X SI[?] GU4
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) , GIR3~c#? [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] X SI# GU4
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 201. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005268) — 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.