Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 071
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, around 3300–3000 BCE — the very dawn of writing. It is a tally: small quantities (ones and twos) of goods including barley, fish and other commodities, each entry boxed in its own case, with a closing notation naming an institution or city on the reverse. Texts like this were not literature but bookkeeping; they show that writing was invented by accountants tracking the flow of goods through temple and city households. The tablet's damage has erased several entries, and some of its archaic signs have never been securely deciphered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short goods ledger: two units of one commodity (marked with the divine/star and plant signs), two of barley of a particular grade, two of something now broken away, an entry involving liquid, two units of fish assigned to the courtyard, two of an illegible item, and then single units of four more items — one described as 'fine', one connected with a household official, and one written with a sign we can no longer identify. At the end, on the reverse, the scribe added a filing note — something like 'received/total — of the city' — repeated with that same unidentified sign. Several lines are lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 2 (units): AN, SAR, AN (a divine(?)/commodity entry with the 'plant/garden' sign); 2 (units): barley (of the) UR5-type (processed grain(?)); 2 (units): [...]; [...]: A (water(?)/liquid entry); 2 (units): fish — (of/for) the courtyard; 2 (units): X (sign illegible); 1 (unit): GISZ3; 1 (unit): [...] fine(?) (SAL); 1 (unit): TUM, house(hold), NAM2 (official/category designation); 1 (unit): ZATU659 (unidentified archaic sign); (subscript) SZU2 — (of the) city; (reverse) ZATU659; SZU2 — (of the) city.
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
2(N01) , AN SAR~b AN 2(N01) , SZE~a UR5~a 2(N01) , [...] [...] , A 2(N01) , KU6~a KISAL~b1 2(N01) , X 1(N01) , GISZ3~b 1(N01) , [...] SAL 1(N01) , TUM~d E2~a NAM2 1(N01) , ZATU659 SZU2 , URU~a1 ZATU659 SZU2 URU~a1
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 071. 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 (P325242) — 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.