Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 135
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary administrative tablet from the Uruk period, one of the earliest forms of writing in the world, used to track deliveries and disbursements of commodities such as barley, fish, and reeds under the authority of officials given the title 'EN' (lord or overseer). Rather than a narrative or literary text, it is a proto-cuneiform accounting record — numbers followed by terse commodity and personnel notations, the ancestor of bureaucratic bookkeeping in Mesopotamia. Its broken state and the ambiguity of many signs reflect how much of this earliest writing system remains only partially deciphered even today.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like a warehouse or storehouse ledger. It starts by noting a quantity of barley that was handed out or allotted, followed by a measure of land or goods 'deposited' at the base of the city. Then there's a receipt of three units recorded as passing 'into the hand' of someone, possibly at a boundary or storage point. The next two lines list an overseer or official ('the lord') associated with a delivery of wood, fish, reeds, and possibly a purification or silver-related item, and then water and something small — but the specifics are frustratingly vague. The rest of the tablet, including what would likely be a summary or total, is broken away and lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], barley — disbursed. 1(N01) field(-unit)/GAN2 — given/deposited, base of the city. 3(N57) — into the hand of / at the border(?). 1(N01), the lord/overseer — delivered — wood, carp, reed, wood, ... , overseer, pure/silver, water, x. 1(N01), the lord/overseer — water, delivered, small, x, [...]. [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , SZE~a BA 1(N01)# , GAN2 RU UR2 URU~a1 3(N57) SZU2 ZAG~a 1(N01) , EN~a DU# GISZ SUHUR# GI GISZ3~a PA~a KU3~a A X 1(N01) , EN~a A DU# TUR X [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 135. 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 (P325072) — 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.