Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 115
About this tablet
This is a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from the Jemdet Nasr period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), one of the very earliest kinds of writing, used to track quantities of goods rather than tell a story. It appears to record numbered entries — counts of some commodity, marked by numeral signs and short notations — possibly involving a disbursement ('into the hand of') and closing with a reference to an official or high-status figure ('EN'). The tablet is badly broken, so most of its content — what exactly was counted, for whom, and why — is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a badly broken accounting tablet. What survives are scattered number-and-commodity entries: a quantity of '2' units of something, followed by a notation that may mean 'delivered' or 'received'; then '3' units of an unidentified good, recorded with a sign scholars simply call ZATU753 because its meaning hasn't been decoded. Toward the end there's a mention of some kind of official or lord figure, possibly the person responsible for or receiving the goods. Almost every line is interrupted by breaks in the clay, so the overall transaction — what was being counted and for what purpose — cannot be reconstructed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine2 (N14-unit) [...], [...] [...], [...] [...] X, 2 (N01-units), ŠU₂ ("into the hand of / disbursed") 3 (N01-units), ZATU753 (unidentified commodity sign) [...], [...] [...], [...] [...] X X (unidentified/damaged signs) [...], [...] KID~a, EN~a ("lord"/official)
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
2(N14)# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] X 2(N01) , SZU2 3(N01) , ZATU753# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , X X [...] , [...] KID~a EN~a
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 115. 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 (P005182) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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