MSVO 3, 48

~3100 BCE·Uruk Period·P005359

About this tablet

This is a small fragment of a proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Uruk, dating to the very dawn of writing (roughly 3200–3000 BCE, the Uruk III period). It appears to be a ration or consumption record — tracking quantities of barley and, apparently, female workers or personnel, tallied under an institutional heading ('the Land') and closing with a summary of numerals. Tablets like this one are the archive of an early city bureaucracy: the scribes who wrote them were not telling stories but keeping the books of temple or palace households, and in doing so they invented the world's first writing system.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This broken ledger fragment records amounts of goods and people under an institutional heading — the surviving signs point to grain (barley) and groups of women or female workers, each entry followed by a mark meaning 'consumed' or 'issued as rations.' A numeral figure of 1 unit is paired with an unclear sign and 'woman,' followed by a line about barley being disbursed. The tablet ends with a cluster of several numerals added together, probably a running or final total, again followed by 'consumed/disbursed.' Almost every line begins in a gap, so the full accounting — what was measured, to whom, and under whose authority — is largely lost.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Experimental

(Obverse, broken at top) [...] 1(N24) [numeral-unit], 'the Land' (KALAM) [...] PA-sign (overseer/ration-mark?) [...] 1(N39~a) [numeral-unit], [...] NAGA (a plant/alkali substance?) [...], [...] woman/female worker (SAL) [...], consumed/disbursed (GU7) 1(N01) [numeral-unit], [illegible sign] woman/female worker (SAL) [...], barley (ŠE) consumed/disbursed (GU7) (closing line) [...] 1(N14) 1(N01) 1(N39~a) 1(N24) [totals], [...] consumed/disbursed (GU7)

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(N24)# , KALAM~b# [...] PA~a
[...] 1(N39~a)# , [...] NAGA~a
[...] , [...] SAL
[...] , GU7#
1(N01) , X SAL
, SZE~a# GU7#
[...] 1(N14)# 1(N01) 1(N39~a) 1(N24) , [...] GU7#

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — MSVO 3, 48. 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 (P005359) — 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

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet (VAT 15211)

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AoF 30, 238,1