Position in chronology
MDP 06, 258
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (in modern southwestern Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the earliest writing systems ever used. The tablet records quantities of goods or commodities under a series of undeciphered sign-categories, using a numerical notation system of impressed circular and wedge-shaped marks. Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered: we can read the numbers but not the commodity signs with certainty, so what precisely is being counted — animals, grain, workers, vessels — cannot be determined from the signs alone. Tablets like this were the administrative backbone of a complex ancient bureaucracy at Susa, a major urban center that was producing written records at roughly the same time as the earliest Sumerian tablets in southern Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists a series of commodity categories — their exact identities still unknown to modern scholarship — alongside numerical quantities: 4 units of one type, 1 of another, 5 of a third, then 1 large unit (N24), 1 larger unit still (N14), 4 units, 3 units, 2 units, and finally 5 large units (N14) of the last category. Part of the top and some entries are broken away. It reads, in essence, like a stockroom tally — column after column of 'item type: quantity' — but the language behind the signs has never been cracked, so we know the numbers without knowing what was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M388 M057~b1 M099 M371 M288, 4(N01) [...] [...], [...] 1(N01) [...] M004 |M218+M101| M371, 5(N01) M377~e |M106+M288| [...], [...] 1(N24) M380 M371, 1(N14) M295~u M220, 4(N01) M387~c × M387 M218, 3(N01) M301 |M296+M296| M057, 2(N01) M290? [...], M288, 5(N14)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M388# M057~b1 M099# M371 M288 , 4(N01) [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] M004 |M218+M101| M371 , 5(N01) M377~e |M106+M288| [...] , [...] 1(N24) M380 M371 , 1(N14) M295~u M220 , 4(N01) M387~c x M387 M218 , 3(N01) M301 |M296+M296| M057 , 2(N01) M290? [...] , M288# , 5(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 258. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008053) — 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.