Position in chronology
MDP 06, 247
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3200–2900 BCE — one of the earliest writing systems ever used, and still not fully deciphered. The tablet records quantities of one or more commodities under a heading sign, organised in the typical Proto-Elamite columnar format with numerical notations. Tablets like this were the accounting tools of an early urban economy: bureaucrats tracked goods, animals, or rations using a script that was invented independently of, but roughly contemporaneously with, the earliest Sumerian writing in southern Iraq. The numbers survive more legibly than the commodity signs, a common feature of these documents.
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 category marker whose meaning we cannot yet read. Under it, a first entry records a commodity — also unreadable — against a large numerical total of roughly 64 or more units. A second entry, partially broken, records approximately 22 or more units of what may be the same or a related commodity. A third entry survives only as the numeral 6. The reverse of the tablet is too damaged to read. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157 [heading/rubric sign], |M195+M057|? |M218+M288| M001 M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45) 4(N14) [= large quantity, approx. 64+ units] [...] M195~d M288 , 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] [= approx. 22+ units] [...] , [...] 6(N14) [= 6 units of some commodity] [reverse, largely illegible]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157 , |M195+M057|? |M218+M288| M001 M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45) 4(N14)# [...] M195~d M288 , 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] [...] , [...] 6(N14)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 247. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008044) — 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.
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.