Position in chronology
CahDAFI 8, 95 16
About this tablet
A small proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Late Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE — among the very earliest writing in human history. The tablet records quantities of goods or commodities assigned against what appear to be institutional signs, using the characteristic numerical notation of the period (N01, N14, N39B units). It is part of the proto-Elamite or Uruk-related accounting tradition at Susa, where scribes developed writing almost simultaneously with southern Mesopotamia. Though heavily damaged and only partially legible, it offers a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic record-keeping of one of the world's first urban administrations.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is an accounting record listing several commodities or allocations against numerical quantities. One entry records 1 unit of something (N39B), another records a commodity under sign M146 with a total of 1 large unit plus 2 small units, a third records signs M387, M240, and M096 together with 1 large unit plus 3 small units, and a further entry records sign M177~a against 3 small units. Two or more signs in each line remain unreadable. The beginning and end of the tablet are broken away, and the overall commodity being tracked cannot be identified from the surviving signs alone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [Sign M377] [Sign M251] x x , [...] [...] , 1(N39B) [Sign M146] x 1(N14) 2(N01) [Sign M387] [Sign M240] [Sign M096] , 1(N14) 3(N01) x x [Sign M218] [Sign M177~a] , 3(N01) x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , M377# M251# x x , [...] [...] , 1(N39B) M146# x 1(N14) 2(N01) M387 M240 M096# , 1(N14) 3(N01) x x M218# M177~a# , 3(N01) x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — CahDAFI 8, 95 16. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (P009434) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.