Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 126
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, among the very earliest writing in the world, dating to roughly the late fourth millennium BCE. It records a series of small numbered entries — quantities of grain, foodstuffs, and possibly personnel (including a female worker and a group called Šubur, perhaps dependent laborers or people from the north) — organized in a gridded ledger format typical of early institutional bookkeeping at temple or palace storehouses. The scribe is anonymous, as almost all such tablets are; the tablet's value lies not in narrative content but in what it shows about the birth of accounting and record-keeping itself. The final lines, repeating a barley total, suggest a summary or closing entry to the account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory sheet from a storehouse. Someone logged a series of items in small numbered lots — a portion of grain-product, a unit marked with a possible 'silver' or 'shining' sign, a batch tied to a group called the Šubur (perhaps outside laborers or dependent workers), another lot involving a woman worker, and more entries that are now broken away. At the end, the account is closed out with a tally of six units of barley, restated as if to confirm the total. Much of the tablet is too damaged or too early in the history of writing to translate with certainty — many of the signs are still debated by specialists today.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , ABZU(?) 3(units) , LA2 SUG5 1(unit) GUG2 1(unit) , AN(?) KU3 (silver/shining) [...] , SZUBUR (dependent-worker) GUG2(?) 1(unit) , NIM (person/high-status?) [...] , HI (mixed?) [...] , ABZU(?) [...] , [...] 1(unit) , DU8 (released/allotted?) GUG2 X 1(unit) , SAL (woman) SZU PAP (total/overseer) [...] , [...] 6 (units of) , barley , 6 (units, restated)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , ABZU#? 3(N39~a) , LA2 SUG5 1(N28) GUG2 1(N28)# , AN#? KU3~a# [...] , SZUBUR GUG2~a? 1(N30~a)# , NIM~b1 [...] , HI@g~a# [...] , ABZU#? [...] , [...] 1(N28)# , DU8~c GUG2 X 1(N39~a) , SAL# SZU# PAP~a [...] , [...] |U4.6(N08)|# , SZE~a , |U4.6(N08)|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 126. 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 (P325455) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.