Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 139
About this tablet
This is a small proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the late 4th millennium BCE), among the very earliest writing in human history — centuries before syllabic cuneiform existed. It is not a story or letter but a bookkeeping record: rows of numeral impressions paired with commodity signs (a foodstuff, a horn or liquid measure, birds) tallying goods moving through some institutional household, likely a temple or palace storehouse, with a summary total on the reverse. Its author was an anonymous administrator using a numerical notation system (circular and crescent stylus impressions) that predates true sentences — the whole 'text' is essentially a spreadsheet pressed into wet clay.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory slip. One entry lists a quantity of a foodstuff or commodity (roughly 21 units in the ancient counting system) credited to or handled by a named official. A second entry records two units of something involving 'horn' or a liquid measure. A third entry, mostly broken away, tallies birds — twelve of them — assigned to a storage bin or compartment. Two more lines are too damaged to read. At the bottom, a running total survives in fragments: something like '6 large units, 1 middle unit, 3 small units,' though the commodity it totals is lost. In short: a warehouse tally of foodstuffs, birds, and possibly containers, most of it now illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2(N34) 1(N14) 1(N01), GUG2(-commodity) — in the hand of / delivered by (SZU) 2(N34), SI-A (horn-vessel? / liquid measure) [...], [...] 2(N14), bird(s) (MUSZEN) — bin/compartment (UB) [...], [...] [total:] [...] 6(N34) [...] 1(N14) [...] 3(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
2(N34) 1(N14) 1(N01) , GUG2 SZU 2(N34) , SI A [...] , [...] 2(N14) , MUSZEN UB [...] , [...] [...] 6(N34)# [...] 1(N14) [...] 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 139. 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 (P325762) — 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.