Position in chronology
MDP 06, 304
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, among the very earliest uses of writing anywhere on earth. It records quantities of goods or commodities against a series of undeciphered proto-Elamite sign groups, in the format typical of proto-Elamite accounting: commodity sign(s) on the left, numerical notation on the right. The signs themselves have not been semantically decoded — proto-Elamite remains one of the few ancient scripts still not understood — but the tablet's structure is unmistakably a ledger of received, disbursed, or counted items. It is now held in the Louvre as part of the Susa excavation archive (Sb 15143).
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a ledger. Each line records a commodity — identified by signs we cannot yet read — followed by a quantity: in most legible entries, somewhere between one and two large units (N14), occasionally with additional smaller units (N01) added. Many lines are broken and their quantities or commodity labels are lost. The overall record appears to track multiple different categories of goods, each counted separately. The rest is too damaged or undeciphered to render in plain language.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , 1(N14) 2(N01) x [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N14) M101~b , 2(N14) [...] x M230 M024 M033 , 1(N14) M146 x , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] M254~a , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] M387~a M110 , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] M153 M059~f , [...] [...] M309 M314 [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 1(N14)# 2(N01)# x [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N14) M101~b , 2(N14) [...] x M230 M024# M033# , 1(N14) M146# x , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] M254~a#? , [...] [...] , 1(N01)# [...] M387~a M110# , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] M153 M059~f# , [...] [...] M309#? M314# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 304. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008093) — 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.