Position in chronology
CUSAS 01, 193
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE), one of the earliest phases of writing in human history. It records quantities of livestock and possibly fish under numbered entries, with notations about consumption (GU7, 'eaten/disbursed') and time or place markers. The tablet is heavily fragmented and uses archaic proto-cuneiform signs — pictographic ancestors of later cuneiform — many of which have not yet been assigned definitive phonetic readings. It belongs to the earliest stratum of bureaucratic record-keeping: a tally of commodities moving through an institutional household, probably a temple or large estate storehouse in ancient southern Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet tallies individual units: one sheep, one fish or fish-related item, and one entry under an unread compound sign. Several lines are too broken to read. A quantity recorded under 'NE KI' appears twice, suggesting a repeated category or destination. One entry notes a day marker alongside an institution or title (AB). The final readable line records that goods under the AB category — including an entry tagged SI4 — were consumed or disbursed. The rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (unit) — sheep 1 (unit) — [fish / carp?] 1 (unit) — X [compound sign: ZATU759×KU6] [...] — [...] 1 (N26 units) — NE KI [...] — X X [...] — [...] AB — day+1 [...] [...] — [...] [...] 1(N24) 1(N28) — [compound sign: ZATU714×HI] 1 (N26 units) — NE KI day+1 — AB AB — SI4 — consumed (GU7)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
1(N01) , UDU~a 1(N01)# , SUHUR 1(N01)# , X |ZATU759xKU6~a| [...] , [...] 1(N26) , NE~a KI [...] , X X [...] , [...] AB~a |U4x1(N01)| [...] [...] , [...] [...] 1(N24) 1(N28) , |ZATU714xHI@g~a| 1(N26) , NE~a KI |U4x1(N01)|# AB~a AB~a SI4~f GU7
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CUSAS 01, 193. 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 (P326800) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-18/v5-modern-rendering).
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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.