Position in chronology
MS 3009
About this tablet
This small, rounded clay tablet is a proto-cuneiform administrative record from the Uruk period, one of the earliest phases of writing anywhere in the world, roughly the late 4th millennium BCE. It is a numerical account — rows of impressed circles and pictographic signs tally quantities of goods or people (fodder, grain, workers) against institutional titles like 'lord' (EN) and 'temple administrator' (sanga), ending in what looks like a summary total. Tablets like this come from the earliest bureaucratic archives of Mesopotamian cities such as Uruk, where scribes tracked rations, labor, and temple property using a mix of number signs and word-signs decades before writing could record full sentences.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an old inventory tally, not a story or letter. Someone recorded: 20 units of fodder or plant material (with an unclear second sign), 34 units of some commodity credited to a lord or high official, 20 units associated with the city of Uruk, then a break marking a new entry, 20 units under a heading called 'SAG-IB', 32 workers or members of a labor gang, 30 units of a grain or seed category, and finally a bigger figure — 36 — that seems to be a summary total involving 'the great temple administrator' and 'the lord,' though the line breaks off before it finishes. The back of the tablet is so encrusted with mineral deposits that nothing can be read there, and the edges carry only worn traces of more numbers.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 2(N14) , U2~b DI — 20 units of fodder/plant-material, [sign] DI 3(N14) 4(N01) , ZATU842 EN~a — 34 units of [ZATU842], (for/under) the EN (lord/high official) 2(N14) , UNUG~a — 20 units, (of/at) Uruk , — (word/entry divider) 2(N14) , SAG IB~a — 20 units, SAG-IB (a category or personnel/commodity heading) 3(N14) 2(N01) , ERIN — 32, troop-personnel/labor-gang 3(N14) , NUNUZ~a2 — 30, NUNUZ (grain/seed category) 2(N34) 3(N14) 6(N01) , KISZ GAL~a# SANGA~a# EN~a#? [...] — (large total sign) 36, total/sum(?), the great sanga-official, the EN (lord) [...broken...] (Reverse: broken/effaced by mineral encrustation — no legible signs preserved) (Edges: additional impressed marks, mostly numerical, too worn to read continuously; one edge bears the modern museum inventory mark 'MS 3009', not ancient text)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Engine notes
read from photo9 uncertain terms ↓
- ZATU842 — A rare or unidentified archaic pictograph catalogued in the ZATU sign list; its commodity referent is unknown or disputed. Cannot verify from photo.
- EN~a — The archaic sign for EN, conventionally interpreted as a high-status office-holder, lord, or high priest of an institution; exact semantic force in this administrative context debated.
- UNUG~a — The archaic sign for Uruk (the city); here possibly denoting origin of goods, institutional affiliation, or a toponym used as category label.
- DIN — Archaic sign often associated with plant/herbal products or a specific commodity class; exact referent uncertain.
- IB~a — Sign whose precise commodity or personnel referent in the archaic corpus is not securely established; associated with SAG ('head') here, possibly indicating a category of person.
- ERIN — Conventionally read as 'troops' or 'workers/labor force'; in archaic texts the precise institutional meaning is debated.
- NUNUZ~a2 — Literally depicts a round object or egg; may refer to eggs, seed, or a specific commodity class. The exact referent is uncertain.
- KISZ GAL~a SANGA~a EN~a — This line on the reverse is heavily damaged and mineral-encrusted in the photo; SANGA is conventionally rendered 'chief administrator' or 'temple administrator'; readings marked # and ? in the transliteration indicate the excavator's own uncertainty. Cannot verify from photo.
- N14, N01, N34 — Archaic numerical signs: N14 is a large circular impression (value ~10 in certain commodity contexts), N01 is a small circular impression (value 1), N34 is a large impressed circle of different type. Values vary by commodity context in the archaic sexagesimal/bisexagesimal systems.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the obverse (upper central image) shows a well-preserved small lenticular clay tablet divided into ruled cells by incised lines. The obverse displays clearly legible circular/semi-circular impressed numerals (the archaic N14 and N01 notation) in the left columns of each cell, alongside pictographic signs in the right columns. I can confirm numerals in multiple cells — groups of large circular impressions (N14 = ~10 units) and smaller ones (N01 = 1 unit) — consistent with the transliteration's numerical notations. The pictographic signs are harder to resolve at this resolution: I can see what appears to be a plant/herb sign (U2~b), a head sign (SAG), and signs consistent with ERIN and NUNUZ in their archaic pictographic forms. The sign ZATU842 is not independently verifiable from the photo at this resolution. The reverse (lower image) is heavily encrusted with mineral deposits (calcite crystallisation) and the signs there are almost entirely obscured — the transliteration's final line with KISZ, GAL, SANGA, EN cannot be verified from the photo. The edge views show the typical lenticular profile of an archaic Uruk tablet. Overall the photo broadly supports the transliteration's structure of numerical + commodity entries, but precise sign identification for the rarer signs (ZATU842, KISZ, SANGA) cannot be confirmed. The sign readings follow the CDLI/ZATU sign list conventions for the archaic Uruk corpus; N14 = large circular impression (~10), N01 = small circular impression (1), N34 = large impressed quantity marker.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 12, 2026 · 3462 in / 1217 out tokens
Transliteration
2(N14) , U2~b DIN 3(N14) 4(N01) , ZATU842 EN~a 2(N14) , UNUG~a , 2(N14) , SAG IB~a 3(N14) 2(N01) , ERIN 3(N14) , NUNUZ~a2 2(N34) 3(N14) 6(N01) , KISZ GAL~a# SANGA~a# EN~a#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk IV (ca. 3350-3200 BC) ?) — MS 3009. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006263) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.