Position in chronology
MDP 06, 4995
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3200–3000 BCE — and written in the proto-cuneiform or proto-Elamite script that preceded any fully deciphered writing system. It records quantities of some commodity or set of commodities against a series of signs whose meanings remain unknown: the script has never been decoded. What we can say is that the format — a heading sign at the top, followed by rows pairing unread category signs with numerical notations — is typical of early institutional bookkeeping, the kind of record a storage administrator or temple official would keep to track goods received or distributed. It is one of the earliest attempts by human beings to write down economic information, and the fact that we still cannot read most of it is itself a historically significant puzzle.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a single heading sign whose meaning is unknown. What follows is a series of entries, each pairing one or more unreadable category signs with a number: four units of something, then further quantities — one large unit and one smaller, then multiple entries of one unit each, and five units in a later row, closing with a total or summary numeral at the bottom. The commodity, the institution, and the people involved are all lost to us; the script remains undeciphered. What survives is the skeleton of an ancient account — someone carefully counted something and wrote it down.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157 [heading/rubric — function unknown] M136~s M387~a M261~d1 , 4(N01)# [...] M387~ef x , [...] [...] , 2(N30C@b) x , 1(N14)#? 1(N30C) x M009# M281~f# M096# M263# , [...] x , [...] n(N01) x M352~n#? M096# |M260~1+1(N24)|# , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|# , [...] [...] x |M260+1(N24)| , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|# , 5(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N24)# 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157 , M136~s M387~a M261~d1 , 4(N01)# [...] M387~ef x , [...] [...] , 2(N30C@b) x , 1(N14)#? 1(N30C) x M009# M281~f# M096# M263# , [...] x , [...] n(N01) x M352~n#? M096# |M260~1+1(N24)|# , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|# , [...] [...] x |M260+1(N24)| , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|# , 5(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N24)# 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 4995. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008183) — 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.