Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 131
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3200 BCE), one of the very earliest forms of writing in human history. It records a series of quantified entries — numerals paired with pictographic commodity and institution signs, including references to Uruk itself, a vizier-like official, silver, barley, and storage bins. Rather than a connected narrative, it is a bookkeeping ledger: a scribe's tally of goods, quantities, and the officials or locations responsible for them, the kind of record that underlies the birth of accounting and, with it, writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a set of inventory or ration entries. Line by line, a scribe logged small numbers of units against commodities and storage categories — some tied to a 'stall' or bin, some to silver, some to barley, some to an official called a vizier or minister, and several explicitly to the city of Uruk. The tablet ends with a large barley total marked as 'consumed' or issued out, alongside a puzzling commodity term that may refer to a plucked or blown good, perhaps involving fowl. Several sign readings remain uncertain, and this rendering follows the most contextually plausible sense of each line rather than a single fixed narrative — the tablet itself is a list, not a story.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit) 1 (unit) — cattle-stall(?): ZATU714 (commodity) 1 (unit) — ZATU710, PAP-official/total: storage-bin, allocated portion 1 (unit) — horn(?): axe(?) 2 (units) — ZATU710: storage-bin, allocated portion, silver, father(?) 3 (units) — ZATU710: Uruk 3 (units) — ZATU710: storage-bin, allocated portion, Uruk 3 (units) — storage-bin, allocated portion, Uruk 1 (unit) — storage-bin, allocated portion: barley, delivered, water(?) 1 (unit) — storage-bin, allocated portion: oil, vizier 1 1 1 (units) — field/commodity-category: ISZ (commodity) 1 (unit) — ZATU714 3 (units) — [unclear sign] 1 (unit) — dark(?) reed/textile(?) 2 3(N42~a) [large sum] barley — consumed/disbursed, MUD, stone(?)/child(?), plucked/blown(?) [bird product?]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N05) 1(N42~a) , AB~a ZATU714 1(N01)# , ZATU710 PAP~a# UB ZI~a 1(N01) , SI TUN3~a 2(N42~a)# , ZATU710 UB ZI~a# KU3~a AD~a 3(N42~a) , ZATU710 UNUG~b 3(N42~a) , ZATU710 UB ZI~a UNUG~b 3(N42~a) , UB ZI~a UNUG~b 1(N05) , UB ZI~a# SZE~a DU A 1(N05)# , UB# ZI~a# I SUKKAL 1(N05) 1(N42~a)# 1(N25) , GAN2 ISZ~b 1(N42~a) , ZATU714 3(N14) , X 1(N05) , DAR~a GU~a 2(N20)# 4(N05) 3(N42~a) 1(N25) SZE~a , GU7 MUD NA~a BU~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 131. 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 (P325360) — 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.