MRAH O.4995

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P005573

About this tablet

This is a proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from the late Uruk period, around 3200–3000 BCE. It may come from the area of Umma in southern Iraq. On the reverse a scribe listed five groups of items, each counted and labelled with a category or grade, and added them up to a total of 74. Which category word, AL, is being counted is not clear. The grade signs, 'small/young' and a 'day' sign marked with one, two or three strokes, look like age classes or sub-categories. The closing line gives the total and names the office or personnel responsible. The tablet shows that the earliest writing was, above all, bookkeeping.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

The account lists 36 items under the heading AL, then 8 small or young ones of the EN class, then 7, 1 and 22 small ones graded by the 'day' sign with one, two and three marks. That makes 74 in all. The final line records the total and adds a string of signs that probably names the responsible offices or officials, one of them perhaps connected with salt. The dense front of the tablet is well preserved but was not included in the transliteration, so it is not rendered here.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Reverse (the only part transliterated): 1. 36: AL 2. 8: EN~a, small/young (TUR) 3. 7: U4 with 1 mark, small/young (TUR) 4. 1: U4 with 2 marks, small/young (TUR) 5. 22: U4 with 3 marks, small/young (TUR) 6. (Total) 74: 1(N57) 2(N57); MUN~a1, SU~a, PAP~a, NIM~b2, DARA3~c×KAR2, AL(?) [The heavily inscribed obverse and edges visible in the photograph are not transliterated and are left untranslated here.]

Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

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Transliteration

3(N14) 6(N01) , AL#
8(N01) , EN~a TUR
7(N01) , |U4x1(N57)| TUR
1(N01) , |U4x2(N57)| TUR
2(N14) 2(N01) , |U4x3(N57)| TUR
1(N34) 1(N14) 4(N01) , 1(N57) 2(N57) MUN~a1 SU~a PAP~a NIM~b2 |DARA3~cxKAR2| AL#?

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MRAH O.4995. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, Belgium (P005573) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).

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Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet (VAT 15211)

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