Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 119
About this tablet
This is a small clay accounting tablet from the very dawn of writing, the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), when Sumerian scribes were inventing the first system of numerals and pictographic signs to track goods in temple or palace storehouses. The tablet is a tally of quantities — measured in different-sized numeral marks — paired with commodity or category signs: rations, fodder, beer, jars, a storehouse, and what appears to be an official called a sanga overseeing part of the account. It almost certainly records disbursements or stores of foodstuffs and containers under institutional supervision, though because this proto-cuneiform script predates full grammar, the exact transaction it describes cannot be reconstructed with certainty.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory or ration list. It records several batches of goods, each given as a quantity followed by what it is: some fodder or plant matter counted against a threshing floor and a day-marker, a batch of rations or bread also tied to a day-count, more goods marked as 'opened' allotments, and then a couple of lines whose details are lost. Further down, an official called the sanga is named alongside some kind of storage category — probably confirming that this account was kept under his authority or in his storehouse. The closing lines total up further deliveries: goods stored at 'the house,' spears or dagger-shaped implements, and finally two separate remainder-allocations, one of beer and one measured out into jars. In short: a warehouse ledger, tallying rations, tools, beer and jars entering or leaving storage under an administrator's supervision — the everyday bookkeeping of an early Mesopotamian institution, written in a script barely a few centuries old.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine4 (units) — fodder(?)/plant, threshing-floor, day-sign 5 (units) — rations/bread(?), day-sign, [quality-marker NUN] 2 (units) — day-sign, "opened," fodder(?)/plant 1 (unit) — day-sign, "opened" [...] — [...] 1 (large-unit) — rations/bread(?), day-sign, fodder(?)/plant 1 (large-unit) — the sanga-official, [...], cattle-stall/storage(?), TUN3-container(?) [...] — [...] 2 (units) — storehouse, sky/AN(-marker) 3 (units) — spear/dagger-sign (SZITA) 1 (unit) — remainder/allotment, at/from (place) — beer 1 (unit) — sky/AN(-marker), storehouse 1 (unit) — remainder/allotment, at/from (place) — jar/vessel
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
4(N01) , U2~a DU6~b U4 5(N01) , GAR U4# |NUN~b.U4|? 2(N01) , U4 DU8~c U2~a 1(N01) , U4 DU8~c [...] , [...] 1(N14) , GAR U4 U2~a 1(N14) , SANGA~a# X AB~a TUN3~a [...] , [...] 2(N01) , E2~a AN 3(N01) , SZITA~a1 1(N01) , TAK4~a KI KASZ~a 1(N01) , AN E2~a 1(N01) , TAK4~a KI DUG~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 119. 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 (P325363) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (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.