Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 05
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet — or a group of related fragments — from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), probably from the city of Uruk in southern Iraq. It records quantities of date-palms or date-palm products alongside institutional or official designations, including what appears to be a reference to a high-ranking official (EN) and possibly road-rations or a journey. Tablets like this are among the very earliest written records in human history: not literature or law, but economic bookkeeping — the tracking of agricultural commodities by a temple or palace administration. The mention of ZABALAM links the transaction to a known Sumerian city, hinting at inter-urban economic activity.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records deliveries or allocations of date-palms: one large consignment and three smaller units, qualified by categories that are still not fully understood. A place called Zabalam is mentioned, and the final lines reference a high official (an 'en'-lord or institutional head), something to do with a road or journey, a day or date, and a term for cattle that is broken off. The rest of the text is too damaged or lost to read completely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N34) [large unit], date-palms (SZEN~c@t) [qualifier:] MUSZ3~a ME~a 3(N14) [smaller units], date-palms (SZEN~c@t) [commodity:] GISZIMMAR~b1 (date-palm[s]) [place/institution:] ZABALAM~a [...] [...] [...] [official/heading:] EN~a, KASKAL (road-rations?), U4 (day/date?), AB2 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N34) , SZEN~c@t , MUSZ3~a ME~a# 3(N14) , SZEN~c@t# , GISZIMMAR~b1 , ZABALAM~a# [...] [...] , [...] , EN~a# KASKAL# U4 AB2 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 05. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005316) — 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.