Position in chronology
MSVO 1, 143
About this tablet
This is a small, badly broken administrative tablet from Jemdet Nasr (ancient Uruk-period southern Mesopotamia), written in the earliest proto-cuneiform script — a system of pictographs and numeral signs used by temple or palace administrators to track goods before writing could express full sentences. What survives are strings of numerals paired with commodity signs — a bundle-marker, an 'egg/spawn' notation, wood, a reed-mat sign, and a term connected with brightness or silver — suggesting a tally of stored or distributed materials (perhaps reed products, wood, and small valuables) rather than a narrative text. Because the tablet is broken into many joined fragments and the script is at the very origin of writing (c. 3100–2900 BCE), much of its precise accounting logic — what exactly was counted, by whom, and for what purpose — cannot be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet, not a story. The surviving fragments record a series of quantities next to symbols for goods: a run of numbers (3, 3 more, then 5) tied to a bundle or cord and an 'egg-mark' notation; another broken count of 1 next to an unidentified sign and a wood sign; a count of 5 next to a reed-mat and a portion-marker; a count of 2 tied to a compound entry involving 'bright/silver'; and a final, damaged line pairing an uncertain term (possibly 'given' or 'deposited') with an overseer or classification mark and a foot/movement sign. In short: an ancient bookkeeper's ledger of goods — wood, reed mats, bundled items, maybe a small quantity of silver — most of which is now illegible or lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/line 1) [...] 3(N05) 3(N42a) , 5(N01) , DUR (cord/bundle) NUNUZ (egg/spawn-mark) [...] 1(N34) , ZATU800 GIŠ (wood) [...] 5(N01) , KID (reed-mat) BAR (portion/category) [...] 2(N14) , 5(N57).KU3 (bright/silver-compound) , NI.RU(?) PA GIR3@g 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
[...] 3(N05)# 3(N42~a) , 5(N01) , DUR~b NUNUZ~a1 [...] 1(N34) , ZATU800 GISZ [...] 5(N01) , KID~b# BAR [...] 2(N14)# , |5(N57).KU3~a|# , |NI~a.RU|#? PA~a# GIR3@g~b# X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 1, 143. 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 (P005210) — 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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