Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 086
About this tablet
A small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), recording quantities of goods or personnel in a standard two-column format: numerals on the left, category identifiers on the right. The surviving entries distinguish at least two groups — one marked 'large' with a ŠEŠ~a designation, another marked female with GU~a — suggesting a tally of differentiated worker types or ration categories. The lower half of the tablet is too badly damaged to recover, but the final legible entry preserves the label 'junior/small hand,' likely denoting a subordinate official or lesser allocation. The exact commodity and institutional context cannot be determined from this fragment alone.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives reads like a personnel or ration ledger with two columns. The first entry counts 3 units plus 2 sub-units assigned to a 'large' or 'senior' group with some additional designation. The second counts 4 units plus 3 sub-units for a female category with a GU~a qualifier. A third entry begins with a noticeably larger number — perhaps 20-something units — but whatever it was tracking is broken away. The next three rows are completely lost. The very last readable line has lost its quantity but keeps its label: something allocated to the 'junior' or 'small-hand' category, most likely a lower-ranking worker or a smaller class of goods. The rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine3(N01) 2(N59) | large [GAL~a], [ME~a designation], [ŠEŠ~a / brother-category] 4(N01) 3(N59) | female [SAL], SZA, GU~a 2(N14)[?] + 2(N01) + 1(N59) | [...] [...] | [...] [...] | [...] [...] | [...] [...] | junior/small — [SZU] TUR
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
3(N01) 2(N59) , GAL~a ME~a SZESZ~a 4(N01) 3(N59) , SAL SZA GU~a 2(N14)# 2(N01) 1(N59) , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , SZU TUR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 086. 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 (P328738) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.