CUSAS 01, 099

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P325233

About this tablet

This is one of the world's oldest written documents: a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from roughly 3300–3000 BCE, now in the Cornell collection. Each ruled box holds a number — impressed circles and punched dots made with the end of a reed stylus — followed by a picture-sign naming what was counted, here overwhelmingly barley. The entries are debits or allocations of grain assigned to households, settlements, an official titled 'lord', and one portion set aside as seed. The script at this stage was not yet writing language, only quantities and categories, so the personal and institutional labels can be identified but not pronounced with confidence.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

A grain ledger. The columns run: 4 units of barley under one heading; 10 units of barley marked 'issued'; another 10 units of barley; 20 units of barley set aside as seed; 60 plus 50 units of barley; 13 units of barley to the household. Then a second block — 70 units for one party, 30 units for another, 20 units as a delivery, 14 units for a smaller allotment, 40 units for the settlement and its lord, and 32 units in a summary entry of barley. The tablet then breaks; the last surviving line records a further amount for the settlement, but the number and most of the signs are lost.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Obverse 4 (N01) — barley — U4×2(N57) 1 (N14) — barley — RU 1 (N14) — barley 2 (N14) — barley — seed-grain (NUMUN), BU~a 1 (N45) 5 (N14) — barley 1 (N14) 3 (N01) — barley — the household (E2~a) RU 1 (N45) 1 (N14) — A(?), NAR 3 (N14) — ZATU773~a, GIR3@g~b 2 (N14) — DU (delivery/bringing) 1 (N14) 4 (N01) — TUR, GIŠ3~b 4 (N14) — the settlement (URU~a1×KI), the lord (EN~a) 3 (N14) 2 (N01) — PAP~a, BU~a, [NAM2], barley (Break) [...] — X, SAR~a(?), NIR~b, the settlement (URU~a1)

Our translation engine — Opus 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

4(N01) , SZE~a |U4x2(N57)|
1(N14) , SZE~a RU
1(N14) , SZE~a
2(N14) , SZE~a NUMUN BU~a
1(N45) 5(N14) , SZE~a
1(N14) 3(N01) , SZE~a E2~a
RU
1(N45) 1(N14) , A# NAR
3(N14) , ZATU773~a GIR3@g~b
2(N14) , DU
1(N14) 4(N01) , TUR GISZ3~b
4(N14) , |URU~a1xKI| EN~a
3(N14) 2(N01) , PAP~a BU~a [NAM2] SZE~a
[...] , X SAR~a# NIR~b URU~a1

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 099. 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 (P325233) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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