Position in chronology
MDP 06, 280
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (in modern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the very earliest written records in human history. It records quantities of goods or commodities under a series of category signs whose exact meanings remain undeciphered, since proto-Elamite script has not been fully decoded. The tablet is heavily damaged on one face, while the reverse preserves clearer impressions of numerical notations alongside pictographic signs. Tablets like this are the bureaucratic backbone of early urban society: administrators tracking livestock, grain, or labour using a numerical system before fully phonetic writing existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of entries, each pairing an item or commodity category (the pictographic signs) with a quantity (the numerical notations). Most entries are too broken to read fully. What survives shows, line by line, various amounts — combinations of large and small numerical units — assigned to categories of goods we cannot yet name with certainty. The final line lists what may be a combination of two or three category signs alongside a single quantity. Much of the left-hand side of the tablet is lost or illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], [...] [signs] [commodity?], 1(N39B) [...] [...] x [sign], 1(N39B) 2(N30C) 1(N30D) [...], [...] 2(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...], [...] 2(N39B) 1(N24) [...], [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N30C) [...], [...] 1(N24) 2(N30C) 1(N30D) [...] [commodity?] [sign] [sign?] x, 1(N24)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] M096 M066~g? , 1(N39B) [...] [...] x M097~h? , 1(N39B) 2(N30C)# 1(N30D)# [...] , [...] 2(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...] , [...] 2(N39B) 1(N24) [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N30C) [...] , [...] 1(N24)# 2(N30C)# 1(N30D)# [...] M218?# M371 M033#? x , 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 280. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008073) — 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.