Position in chronology
CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 183
About this tablet
This small, badly broken clay fragment is a scribal exercise from Uruk-period Mesopotamia (roughly the late fourth millennium BCE), one of the very earliest written documents in human history. It is a copy — 'exemplar 183' — of a standardized lexical list: a sequence of entries, each introduced by the number '1', pairing recurring signs (NAM2, DI, PA, RAD, AB, ME, GAL, EN, and others) that ancient trainee scribes memorized as part of learning cuneiform writing. The closing line, totaling 41, likely tallies the number of entries in the list rather than counting any actual commodity. Lists like this one were copied by hand for centuries across Mesopotamian scribal schools, making this fragment a tiny piece of a vast, standardized curriculum.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of a scribal training list, not a record of any real transaction. Each line simply reads '1' followed by a fixed pair or trio of signs — entries such as 'NAM2 DI', 'NAM2 NAM2', 'NAM2 PA RAD', 'AB ME', 'GAL, (compound sign)', and 'EN ...' — the standardized vocabulary a student scribe was made to copy out sign by sign. Several lines at both the start and later in the list are too damaged to read. The tablet ends with a summary count of 41, most likely the total number of entries the full list originally contained, though that final line too breaks off before its final content can be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [1(N01)] : [......] (broken) 2. 1(N01) : [......] KAB 3. 1(N01) : NAM2 DI 4. 1(N01) : NAM2 NAM2 5. 1(N01) : [......] (broken) 6. 1(N01) : NAM2 PA RAD 7. 1(N01) : AB ME 8. 1(N01) : GAL, 1(N58).BAD (compound sign) 9. 1(N01) : EN [......] (broken) 10. 1(N01) : [......] (broken) 11. 1(N01) : [......] (broken) 12. 1(N01) : [......] (broken) 13. 41 (4(N14) 1(N01)) : X [......] (broken — closing total line)
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(N01)] , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] KAB# 1(N01) , NAM2 DI 1(N01) , NAM2 NAM2 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01) , NAM2# PA~a# RAD~a# 1(N01) , AB~a# ME~a# 1(N01) , GAL~a |1(N58).BAD~a|# 1(N01) , EN~a# [...] 1(N01) , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] 1(N01)# , [...] 4(N14)# 1(N01)# , X [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Uruk III (ca. 3200-3000 BC)) — CDLI Lexical 000002, ex. 183. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P006181) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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