Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 315
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic clay tablet from Adab in southern Iraq, covering nothing but the number ten, stamped over and over in ruled rows — fifty-four times, adding up to 540. There is no commodity named, no official, no date: just the count. Tablets like this belong to the earliest stages of Mesopotamian bookkeeping, when a scribe could register a quantity of something (grain measures, animals, workers, bundles) whose identity everyone present already knew. It is a reminder that writing in Mesopotamia began as accounting, and that numbers came before sentences.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is a tally sheet and nothing else. Across nine ruled rows the scribe punched the sign for "ten" six times per row — fifty-four marks in all, 540 units in total. One mark in the last row is broken away but can be safely restored from the pattern. Nothing tells us what was being counted, who counted it, or when; the reverse is blank and worn smooth.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 10, 10, 10, [10], 10, 10 (Fifty-four impressions of the sign for "ten"; total 540.) (Reverse: uninscribed / surface eroded, no text preserved.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(u)# 1(u)# 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u)# 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) 1(u) [1(u)] 1(u)# 1(u)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 315. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P251612) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
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.