Position in chronology
MSVO 3, 46
About this tablet
This is a tiny administrative tablet from the proto-cuneiform period at or near Uruk (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE), one of the very earliest experiments in writing. Its surface, worn down to little more than the ancient numeral impressions and a handful of legible sign-shapes, once recorded a transaction — likely a disbursement of barley or another commodity — tracked with the archaic round and crescent numeral marks characteristic of this era. The damage means we can no longer reconstruct who received what or why, but the surviving numbers and administrative signs (NAMEŠDA, GU7 'consumed/disbursed', BAR) place it firmly in the world of early institutional bookkeeping, the accounting infrastructure that writing itself grew out of.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a small, badly worn accounting tablet. What survives are a string of numbers and quantities — one unit here, two there, three of something else — attached to broken labels that once identified a category of goods or people (one term possibly a title or role, 'NAMEŠDA') and a quantity of barley. Further down, another entry lists a recurring term (twice repeated, meaning unclear) followed by a notation that something was 'consumed' or 'issued out,' and a final line naming a portion or category called BAR. Everything else — the names of the people involved, the exact commodities, and the transaction's full purpose — has broken away or eroded from the tablet's surface.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] 1(N14) [...] , NAMEŠDA [...] 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] , barley (ŠE~a) [...] [...] 3(N39~a) [...] [...] 1(N39~a)(?) [...] , [...] , [...] (Reverse) [...] , [...] MUŠ3~a [...] , GU7 ("consumed/disbursed") , [...] BAR
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(N14)# [...] , NAMESZDA# [...] 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] , SZE~a [...] [...] 3(N39~a)# , [...] [...] 1(N39~a)#? [...] , [...] , [...] [...] , [...] MUSZ3~a# [...] , GU7 , [...] BAR
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 46. 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: Land Berlin, Berlin, Germany (P005357) — 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
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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