Position in chronology
MDP 06, 264
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to the late fourth millennium BCE — roughly contemporaneous with the earliest writing in Mesopotamia. It records numerical quantities assigned to commodity or commodity-category signs, most likely tracking allocations or stocks of goods within a temple or palace economy. Proto-Elamite script has not been fully deciphered, so the exact commodities cannot be named with certainty, but the structure — sign, then number — is the universal grammar of ancient accounting. It is one of thousands of such tablets that show Susa participating in the same administrative revolution that produced cuneiform writing further west.
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. Each line pairs a category sign — probably identifying a type of commodity or worker — with a number. The quantities are mostly small: ones and twos in the larger units, with some fractional notations. Several entries are too damaged or broken to read. The final legible line records the category M295~ka M157~a M288 against a quantity of 1(N34). The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] |M106+M288|, [...] [...], [...] 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...], [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...], [...] 1(N01) M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45) [...] M288 , 2(N45) M295~ka M157~a M288 , 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] |M106+M288|# , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45)# [...] M288 , 2(N45)# M295~ka M157~a M288 , 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 264. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008057) — 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.
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.