Position in chronology
MS 2869/04
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, found at or associated with Umma. What survives is a column of numeral notations (units counted with the archaic N01 and N57 number signs) paired with a handful of incised signs that may record commodities, vessels, or institutional markers — the kind of terse tally a temple or palace scribe kept to track goods coming in or going out. Because the piece is only a corner-sized shard, the actual transaction — what was counted, by whom, for whom — cannot be reconstructed with confidence; it is a fragment of bookkeeping rather than a connected narrative.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This broken scrap of a ledger records a series of quantities — 9, then 3, then 3, then 2, then 1 unit, and later a separate measure of 1 — each apparently followed by a short notation of goods or a place/person marker written in a handful of early signs. One entry may note something 'given' or 'deposited,' another mentions what might be a boat or vessel, and a later line seems to record something 'disbursed.' The tablet is so damaged that most of the descriptive words after each number are lost, so we're left with the skeleton of an inventory or receipt whose full content — what exactly was being counted and for whom — no longer survives.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. 9(N01) units, [...] RU (given/deposited?) 2. 3(N01) units, MAR~a — DA~a — AN 3. 3(N01) units [...], [illegible sign] [illegible sign] [...] 4. [...] 2(N01) units, [illegible sign] [...] 5. 1(N01) unit [...], [...] 6. [...], [...] 1(N57 unit) BA (disbursed?) [...] 7. [...], [illegible sign] [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
9(N01)# , [...] RU# 3(N01) , MAR~a DA~a AN 3(N01) [...] , X X [...] [...] 2(N01)# , X [...] 1(N01)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N57) BA# [...] , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2869/04. 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: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006202) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.