Position in chronology
MDP 06, 382
About this tablet
A highly fragmentary administrative tablet from ancient Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE. It belongs to the proto-Elamite or late Uruk proto-cuneiform accounting tradition and records quantities of commodities — items, animals, or institutional goods — against numerical notations using the standard numerical signs of that early writing system. The signs are largely undeciphered ideograms whose exact meanings remain unknown, but the structure — commodity sign followed by a number — is the universal grammar of the world's earliest administrative bookkeeping. This tablet is one of thousands from Susa that document how complex urban economies were managed before a fully phonetic script existed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken accounting record listing various commodity categories alongside their quantities. Most entries follow the pattern: [type of item] — quantity 1 (or 5, or 6, depending on the entry). One entry records a single large-measure unit of something catalogued under the sign M379; another longer entry groups several commodity classifiers together before its total, which is lost. The recurring compound M305 M388 appears to mark a particular category of goods appearing more than once in the ledger. Several lines are too damaged or broken to read, and the sign identities themselves remain undeciphered — we can read the numbers but not yet the words.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M218~b M066 M271~ca , 1 M263~e [...] , [...] [...] M035? M066 M271~ca , 1 M048~d M051~b M271~ca , [...] [...] |M036+1(N30C)| , 6 M379 , 1 (large unit) M305 M388 M240 M097~h M004 [M218 x] , [...] [...] M317 M271~ca , 1 [x] , 1 M271~ca , 1 |M036+1(N14)| , [...] [...] , 5? M305 M388 [...] , [...] M059 M501 M264~a , 1 |M036+1(N30D)| , 1 (medium unit)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M218~b# M066# M271~ca# , 1(N01)# M263~e [...] , [...] [...] M035#? M066 M271~ca , 1(N01) M048~d M051~b M271~ca# , [...] [...] |M036+1(N30C)| , 6(N01) M379 , 1(N39B) M305 M388 M240 M097~h M004# [M218 x] , [...] [...] M317 M271~ca# , 1(N01) x , 1(N01) M271~ca# , 1(N01) |M036+1(N14)|# , [...] [...] , 5(N01)#? M305# M388 [...] , [...] M059 M501 M264~a , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|# , 1(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 382. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008163) — 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.