Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 118
About this tablet
A broken corner of a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), now in the Cornell collection. Its surviving cases hold numerals — single wedge-shaped units and round impressions of the larger 'N14' value — set beside signs for rations or food portions (GAR) and a name or title written with the still-unread sign ZATU714. Writing at this date had no grammar and recorded no sentences: the scribe was simply tallying commodities against people or institutions. Too little survives to say what was being counted, but the tablet belongs to the very first generation of written documents anywhere in the world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Most of this little ledger is gone. What is left runs roughly: one unit — entry lost; then a line naming someone or something written with the sign ZATU714, with 'within' and a name-marker before another break; one more unit against a ration entry and a container-sign; two units against a day-or-date notation and again rations; three of the larger round units, entry lost; and finally one more round unit in a line broken at both ends. The rest of the tablet, and the reverse, tell us nothing further.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, upper cases — destroyed) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] ZATU714, ŠA₃~a1, MU [...] [...] , [unreadable sign] [...] (lower cases) [...] 1(N01) , GAR, LAGAB~b 2(N01) , U₄, GAR 3(N14) , [...] [...] 1(N14) , [...] (remainder lost; reverse uninscribed/effaced)
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
[...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) , [...] ZATU714# SZA3~a1# MU [...] [...] , X [...] [...] 1(N01) , GAR LAGAB~b 2(N01) , U4 GAR 3(N14) , [...] [...] 1(N14) , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 118. 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 (P325763) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.