Position in chronology
MDP 06, 315
About this tablet
A fragmentary Proto-Elamite or early proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE. It appears to be a commodity list or inventory: a series of undeciphered sign groups, each followed by small whole-number quantities (ones and twos), with occasional fractional notations. Proto-Elamite tablets of this kind are among the earliest written records from the ancient Near East, predating the full development of readable writing; the sign values remain undeciphered, so we can observe the accounting structure but cannot read the commodities by name. The tablet survives in several fragments and is now held at the Louvre.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of items — we can see the entries and the quantities clearly, but the signs naming each commodity have not yet been deciphered. Each line records one category of goods and a count: most entries record 1 unit of something, the last two fully readable lines record 2 units each, and a couple of entries include a small fractional amount alongside the whole number. Several lines are too damaged or broken to read at all. The document is essentially ancient bookkeeping, carefully laid out, but the goods being counted remain unknown to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [M329?], 1 M370 M376 M072, 1 |M157+M057|? M297 M072, [...] M370? M046?, 1 M388 M376 M001, 1 |M370~b+M388|, 1 M288, 1 (+ fraction) [...], 1 M124, 1 |M370+M388+M370|, 2 |M370~b+M388|, 2 [x], 1 (+ fraction?)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , M329#? , 1(N01) M370 M376 M072 , 1(N01)# |M157+M057|? M297 M072 , [...] M370# M046# , 1(N01) M388 M376 M001 , 1(N01) |M370~b+M388| , 1(N01)# M288 , 1(N01) 2(N39B) [...] , 1(N01) M124 , 1(N01) |M370+M388+M370| , 2(N01) |M370~b+M388| , 2(N01) x , 1(N01)# 2(N39B)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 315. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008104) — 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.