Position in chronology
MDP 06, 240
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–2900 BCE. Proto-Elamite is a script that has not yet been fully deciphered, so the individual sign values cannot be read as words in any known language — we can describe the structure of the record but not its precise content. The tablet appears to record several commodity or transaction entries, each paired with a quantity notation of one large unit, under an opening rubric sign and closed by a compound sign — the standard format of Proto-Elamite accounting documents. It is one of thousands of such tablets found at Susa that document the earliest complex administrative economy in ancient Iran, a bureaucratic system that ran in parallel with, and was likely influenced by, the roughly contemporary Sumerian proto-cuneiform system of southern Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a heading or document-type marker. What follows are four entries — each combining a cluster of signs (likely identifying a commodity, an institution, or an official) with a quantity of one large unit. The second and third entries are partially damaged. The tablet closes with a compound sign that probably marks the end of the account or signals a total. The precise goods or people being counted cannot be read: the script remains undeciphered, and we can only say this is a tally of several items, each recorded as a single large measure, in a standardized accounting format.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric:] M157 [Entry 1:] M377 M124 M048~c M009 M371 M296~a [broken] [...] [Entry 2:] [...] M380~b M371 — 1 (large quantity unit) [Entry 3:] M347 M110 M371 — 1 (large quantity unit) [Entry 4:] M024~1 M035 M066[?] M263~1 M221~1 — 1 (large quantity unit) [Closing sign:] |M157~a+M131~a| (compound sign, possible document closure or total marker)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157 , M377 M124 M048~c M009 M371 M296~a# [...] , [...] [...] M380~b M371 , 1(N39B) M347 M110 M371 , 1(N39B) M024~1 M035 M066#? M263~1 M221~1 , 1(N39B) |M157~a+M131~a|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 240. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008037) — 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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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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.