Position in chronology
SE 124
About this tablet
A small proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dated to the late fourth millennium BCE — among the earliest writing in human history. It records quantities of several different commodities or categories, each paired with a numerical value in the proto-Elamite counting system. The signs themselves have not been deciphered: proto-Elamite writing remains the world's largest undeciphered ancient script, and while we can read the numbers clearly, we do not know what goods or assets are being tallied. Even in its opacity, this tablet is a vivid trace of a complex economy being managed in writing for the first time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists several categories of goods alongside their quantities: one entry records 24 units of an unknown commodity, another 11 units of a second category, another 46 units, another 12 units, and another 6 units — with a final summary or heading line giving a total or aggregate of 99 units. The labels for each category remain undeciphered, so we know the numbers but not what is being counted. The rest is, for now, lost to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM207# , M054# , 2(N14) 4(N01) M373# , 1(N14) 1(N01) M072 , 4(N14) 6(N01) M046 , 1(N14) 2(N01) M370 , 6(N01)# M207# , 9(N14) 9(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M207# , M054# , 2(N14) 4(N01) M373# , 1(N14) 1(N01) M072 , 4(N14) 6(N01) M046 , 1(N14) 2(N01) M370 , 6(N01)# M207# , 9(N14) 9(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — SE 124. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Couvent Saint-Etienne, Jerusalem (P009441) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.