Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 086
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken administrative tablet from the Uruk/Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), one of humanity's earliest writing systems in its infancy. The surviving lines are a mix of numeral notations and commodity signs — beer, sheep or small livestock, a receiving formula, and what may be a bundled good or a measuring-reed — typical of the bookkeeping records kept by early temple or palace administrations at sites like Jemdet Nasr in southern Iraq. So much of the tablet is missing that we can no longer reconstruct the full transaction it once recorded, only fragments of an accounting entry.
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. One entry counts out a quantity of beer using two different numeral notations. Another entry, its details lost, records sheep or small livestock — this happens at least twice on the tablet. A further line gives a count followed by what seems to be a 'received' or 'handed over' notation, and a later, badly damaged line may refer to a bundled item or binding, followed by a mention of a measuring-reed. Because so much of the tablet is broken away, the overall transaction — who delivered what to whom, and for what purpose — cannot be reconstructed; only isolated numbers and commodity terms remain.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. 9(N20), |U4×(1(N14).8(N01))| |U4×1(N57)| — beer (KASZ). 2. 1(N34) 2(N01) [...] — sheep/small livestock (UDU). 3. 6(N20), [...]. 4. 2(N14) [...], [...]. 5. 3(N34) [...] 1(N14) [...] — sheep/small livestock (UDU). 6. 1(N60) 2(N52), 7. 3(N14) 5(N01) — into the hand of / received (ŠU2). (Reverse or continuation) 8. [...] 1(N34) [...] — binding/bundle (DUR). 9. [...] — measuring-reed (GI) [...].
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(N20)# , |U4x(1(N14).8(N01))| |U4x1(N57)| KASZ~b# 1(N34) 2(N01) [...] , UDU~a# 6(N20) , [...] 2(N14)# [...] , [...] 3(N34)# [...] 1(N14)# [...] , UDU~a 1(N60) 2(N52) , 3(N14)# 5(N01) , SZU2 [...] 1(N34)# [...] , DUR~b [...] , GI# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 086. 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 (P005153) — 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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