Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 233
About this tablet
A small, heavily fragmented proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the late Uruk or Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), now reassembled from two joining pieces held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. It appears to record quantities of livestock — cattle and sheep, perhaps young animals — associated with an institutional category (possibly a cattle-stall or similar enclosure) and a possible reference to the city of Uruk. The final surviving entries likely concern ration disbursements or consumption records. This is exactly the kind of everyday bookkeeping that represents humanity's earliest systematic writing: not literature or royal proclamation, but the ledger-keeping of a complex urban economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet records at least two entries of 2 units each linked to a cattle-stall or institutional livestock category, apparently associated with some kind of assembly or collective body. There is also a reference to sheep and young animals, and what may be a connection to the city of Uruk and a field or land category. The last readable lines seem to record a head-count or personnel entry followed by something given or deposited, and a final note about rations consumed or disbursed. Much of the text is broken away and cannot be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 2, cattle-stall / AB~a category — assembly [...], sheep — young animal (calf/lamb) [...], [...] X Uruk-institution field(?) X [...], X [...] 2, cattle-stall / AB~a category — assembly — MU — ŠU [...], [...] head(?) |NI~a.RU|(?) [...], [...] consumed / ration disbursed(?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] 2(N01)# , AB~a UKKIN~a [...] , UDU~a AMAR [...] , [...] X UNUG~a GAN2# X [...] , X [...] 2(N01) , AB~a UKKIN~a MU# SZU# [...] , [...] SAG#? |NI~a.RU|# , [...] GU7#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 233. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005300) — 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.