Position in chronology
MDP 06, 272
About this tablet
A proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Susa, southwestern Iran, dated to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3000 BCE) — among the very earliest writing in human history. It records quantities of goods, likely commodities such as grain, livestock, or rations, assigned to various categories or recipients, each line ending with a numeral. The tablet is fragmentary and heavily damaged, with many sign clusters still not fully decoded, reflecting the experimental, proto-literate stage of record-keeping before Sumerian writing fully matured. Documents like this are the direct ancestors of the bureaucratic archives that would define Mesopotamian civilization for the next three thousand years.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged early accounting record listing various commodities or goods alongside their quantities — mostly ones and occasional larger counts. Several entries are broken or missing, but what survives shows a structured list: a series of items, each assigned a small numeral (often '1', occasionally larger amounts up to the equivalent of 4-plus units). The specific names of the goods and people involved cannot all be read, as many signs remain undeciphered or too damaged. The rest of the entries are too broken to reconstruct with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M049~c? M240~a? M057~a , 1(N01)? [...] [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) M262~1 M096 , 2(N01) M032? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M386~a M131 M263 M218 , 1(N01) M260~1? M218? , 1(N39B)? [...] [...] M377~e M347 M371 , 1(N01) M151~e M057~a4 , 1(N01) M218 M295~da M218 , 1(N01) M089 M388 M251~c? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) M259 M009 M371 , 3(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M049~c#? M240~a#? M057~a# , 1(N01)# [...] [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) M262~1 M096 , 2(N01) M032#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M386~a M131 M263 M218 , 1(N01) M260~1#? M218#? , 1(N39B)# [...] [...] M377~e M347 M371 , 1(N01) M151~e M057~a4 , 1(N01) M218 M295~da M218 , 1(N01) M089 M388 M251~c#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) M259 M009 M371 , 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 272. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008065) — 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.