Position in chronology
MS 2900/28
About this tablet
This is a tiny, badly broken fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Uruk period, likely from Umma in southern Iraq — among the very earliest writing in the world, from roughly the late 4th millennium BCE. What survives are a few numerals paired with sign-groups that look like they once recorded quantities of people, animals, or agricultural implements (a 'woman' sign, a 'plow' sign, a 'foot/delivery' sign), but so little of the tablet remains that its actual subject cannot be reconstructed with confidence. It is a fragment of bookkeeping whose full story is lost to breakage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This small clay fragment preserves only scraps of an ancient accounting record. The surviving pieces show entries like '2 units of [something], a female [worker or animal]', '1 unit of an unidentified sign', and a final line mentioning a plow, a foot or delivery mark, and another unclear sign — probably naming an agricultural task, a work party, or a delivery of tools. Everything else — the totals, the officials involved, and the overall purpose of the tally — is missing because the tablet is broken.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/line 1) [...] , [...] 2(N01) , X SAL [...] 1(N01) , ZATU628~b [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , [...] [...] , [...] , APIN~a GIR3~c ZATU839 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] , [...] 2(N01) , X SAL [...] 1(N01) , ZATU628~b# [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] [...] , [...] , APIN~a# GIR3~c@g# ZATU839# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 2900/28. 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 (P006236) — 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.