Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 065
About this tablet
One of the oldest kinds of documents humans ever produced: a livestock account from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE, written in proto-cuneiform before writing could yet record full sentences. An anonymous administrator tallied nearly two hundred sheep, goats, and kids by category — dark-coated animals, grain-fed animals, small kids — using circular and wedge-shaped number impressions. Tablets like this show that writing was born not for poetry or prayer but for bookkeeping: counting herds for a temple or estate economy in southern Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a herd ledger. The clerk counted: 52 dark-coated sheep; 25 sheep and goats; 8 sheep of the grain-fed class; then an entry, now broken, marked as handed over; 27 dark-coated kids; 52 small kids; 3 more grain-fed sheep; and 18 sheep and kids set aside as a distribution portion. A final notation — perhaps the responsible official or a filing mark — closes the account. All told, well over 180 animals sorted by kind, age, and feeding status. The reverse carries a few further signs, likely totals, too damaged to read in full.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 52 (5×10+2) — dark(?) (DARA4) sheep, 25 (2×10+5) — sheep (and) goats, 8 — ... grain-fed(?) sheep, [...] — deposited(?) [...], 27 (2×10+7) — dark(?) (DARA4) kids, 52 (5×10+2) — small kids, 3 — grain-fed(?) sheep, 18 (1×10+8) — sheep (and) kids, BAR-portion; DA [PA] (classifying/official mark).
Our translation engine — Fable 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.
Transliteration
5(N14) 2(N01) , DARA4~c2 UDU~a 2(N14) 5(N01) , UDU~a MASZ2 8(N01) , X SZE3# UDU~a [...] , RU# [...] 2(N14) 7(N01) , DARA4~c2 MASZ 5(N14) 2(N01) , MASZ2 TUR# 3(N01) , SZE3# UDU~a 1(N14) 8(N01) , UDU~a# MASZ BAR DA~a# [PA~a]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 065. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA (P006380) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.