Position in chronology
MDP 06, 309
About this tablet
A heavily fragmented proto-cuneiform or proto-Elamite accounting tablet from ancient Susa (in present-day Iran), dating to the late fourth millennium BCE — roughly contemporary with the earliest writing anywhere in the world. The surviving entries record quantities expressed in the numerical notation system of that era, alongside a series of commodity or category signs whose precise meanings remain undeciphered. Tablets like this were the administrative backbone of early urban economies, tracking allocations of goods — possibly grain, animals, or labor — across institutional storehouses. This one is too damaged and too early in the decipherment tradition to yield a fully readable text, but it stands as direct evidence of the bureaucratic impulse that gave rise to writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives here is a list of entries, each pairing one or more category signs with a numerical quantity. One entry records approximately 12 units of something (1×N14 plus 2×N01); another records 1 large unit (1×N45); a third records around 10 units of a differently categorized item. A longer entry groups five different sign-types together, but its number is lost. The final readable figure is 9 large units. The commodity names cannot yet be read — the signs are among the earliest and still undeciphered — but the accounting structure is unmistakable.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M066 M288, 1(N14) 2(N01)[?] [...], 1(N45) M254~a M372~a M288, 1(N14)[?] [...] M388 M066~1 M352~n M370 M218 M288, [...] [...], [...] 9(N14)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M066# M288 , 1(N14) 2(N01)# [...] , 1(N45) M254~a M372~a M288 , 1(N14)# [...] M388 M066~1 M352~n M370 M218 M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 9(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 309. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008098) — 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.