Position in chronology
MS 4543
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken administrative tablet from the Uruk period (roughly the late 4th millennium BCE), one of the earliest kinds of writing in the world — a bookkeeping tab, not a story or letter. The surviving entries record numbered quantities, apparently of fish (the sign read as 'carp'), alongside a vessel or container term (shita) and volume measures (sila), suggesting this tracked deliveries or allotments of foodstuffs and their containers at an early institutional household, perhaps in or near Umma. Because so much of the tablet is missing, we cannot say who received these goods or for what occasion — only that someone was counting fish, containers, and measured quantities of some commodity.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary tally sheet. It lists, line by line, small counts of goods: one 'large' fish (carp), two fish, three (more fish, badly broken), then a gap, then a mention of six of something illegible. Further down it records 24 units of a vessel or object called 'shita', two units measured out in 'sila' portions under a heading that may mean 'received' or 'in-store', and one more unit measured in sila next to a compound sign we can't securely interpret. The tablet breaks off after that, and the final surviving line preserves only scattered signs — possibly a title (lord/official) and a reference to a day or time period — too damaged to translate as a full sentence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1(N01) — GAL~a SUHUR@g: 1 [unit], large/great carp(-fish) 2(N01) — SUHUR: 2 [units], carp(-fish) 3(N01) [...] — SUHUR# [...]: 3 [units, ...], carp(-fish) [...] [...] — [...]: (break) 6(N01)# [...] — X [...]: 6 [units, ...], [illegible sign] [...] 2(N14) 4(N01) — SZITA@g~b: 24 [units], shita-vessel/object 2(N01) — SZU SZA3~a1 SILA3~a: 2 [units], 'hand'(received?)/inner-store, sila-measure 1(N01) — |TA~dxMASZ| SILA3~a: 1 [unit], TAxMASZ-sign, sila-measure [...] — [...] X: (break, traces only) [...] — [...]: (break) — [...] EN~a#? X U4#? X: [...] EN(?) [...] X, day(?) X [...]
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
1(N01) , GAL~a SUHUR@g 2(N01) , SUHUR 3(N01) [...] , SUHUR# [...] [...] , [...] 6(N01)# [...] , X [...] 2(N14) 4(N01) , SZITA@g~b 2(N01) , SZU SZA3~a1 SILA3~a 1(N01) , |TA~dxMASZ| SILA3~a [...] , [...] X [...] , [...] , [...] EN~a#? X U4#? X
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MS 4543. 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 (P006323) — 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.
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