Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 008
About this tablet
This is a small clay administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasf period, roughly the late fourth millennium BCE — one of the very earliest forms of writing, invented to keep track of goods and labor in early Mesopotamian institutions. The surviving fragments record numbers of small livestock (kids/goats), barley, and 'field' allotments, tied to titled officials such as a sanga (temple administrator) and an en (a high-status lord or institutional head). The tablet is badly broken into several pieces, so most of the specific transactions, names, and totals are lost, but the pattern is typical of the proto-cuneiform bookkeeping used by temple or palace households at sites like Jemdet Nasr to track produce and personnel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives looks like an inventory or ration list. Various quantities — some kids or young goats, some barley, and references to a 'field' — are recorded against the titles of officials: a temple administrator (sanga) and a lord or senior official (en). Numbers appear throughout (ones, twos, larger counts toward the end), but most of the descriptive text naming the actual commodities, people, and purpose is broken away. The tablet ends with a final tally involving barley and a field allotment credited to the 'en' official, overseen or classified by another official mark, but the very last details are lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. [...], [...] 2. 1(N14) [...], [...] 3. 1(N14) [...], [...] SANGA~a (temple administrator) 4. [...], [...] 5. [...] 2(N01) [...], [...] IL(?) [...] 6. 1(N22), GI TU~b(?) [...] 7. 1(N14), KISZIK~a [...] 8. 1(N14), SANGA~a (temple administrator) [...] 9. 1(N14), EN~a (lord/high official) [...] [...] 10. 1(N22) [...], [...] [...] 11. [...], [...] EN~a (lord/high official) [...] 12. 1(N14) 1(N22), MASZ (kid/goat) GAN2 (field) [...] [...] (Reverse) 13. [...] 5(N14) 1(N22) [...], |SZE~a&SZE~a| (barley, doubled sign) GAN2 (field) EN~a (lord/high official) PA~a (overseer/classifying mark) |1(N58).BAD~a| [...]
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
[...] , [...] 1(N14)# [...] , [...] 1(N14)# [...] , [...] SANGA~a# [...] , [...] [...] 2(N01)# [...] , [...] IL# X 1(N22)# , GI# TU~b#? X 1(N14)# , KISZIK~a# [...] 1(N14)# , SANGA~a# X 1(N14)# , EN~a# X [...] 1(N22)# [...] , X [...] [...] , [...] EN~a# X 1(N14) 1(N22) , MASZ GAN2# X [...] [...] 5(N14)# 1(N22) [...] , |SZE~a&SZE~a| GAN2 EN~a# PA~a# |1(N58).BAD~a| [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 008. 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: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (P005075) — 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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