Position in chronology
MDP 06, 323
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE — among the very earliest writing in human history. The signs belong to the proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform script tradition, a system that has not yet been fully deciphered, which means the signs can be identified and counted but their spoken-language values remain unknown. The tablet appears to record quantities of one or more commodities, each entry paired with a numeral (1 or 2 in the N01 system), in the typical columnar layout of early Mesopotamian and Elamite accounting. It is a fragment of the world's first bureaucracy — a scribe at an early urban institution keeping track of goods, animals, or allocations in a way that anticipates all later record-keeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a heading or category sign whose meaning is lost to us. Below it, several lines list commodity or institutional designations — each one a cluster of signs we can identify but not yet read as words — followed by numerical tallies: one unit here, one unit there, two units in another entry. The last legible line records another sign grouping whose count is broken away. The reverse of the tablet is uninscribed or blank. In essence: a short inventory, probably of goods or rations, kept by an official at early Susa. The precise commodities and the names behind the entries remain undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric:] M157(?) [Line 1:] M388 — M057~a — M240 — M059~f1 — [...] — [...] [Line 2:] M377~e — M097~h(?) — M262~1 — : 1 [Line 3:] M099 — M390 — M218 — : 1 [Line 4:] [...] — : 1 [Line 5:] [...] — : [...] 2 [Line 6:] M352~o — : [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157#? , M388# M057~a M240# M059~f1 [...] , [...] M377~e M097~h#? M262~1 , 1(N01) M099 M390 M218 , 1(N01) [...] , 1(N01) [...] , [...] 2(N01) M352~o , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 323. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008112) — 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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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.