Position in chronology
MDP 17, 010
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, around 3200–3000 BCE, written in proto-Elamite — one of the earliest writing systems in the world, and one that has never been fully deciphered. The tablet records quantities of one or more commodities under a heading or rubric sign, structured in the typical proto-Elamite accounting format: a classifier sign followed by a numerical notation. Like the vast majority of proto-Elamite tablets, it is essentially an economic ledger — a count of goods, animals, or persons managed by a temple or administrative institution. It is held at the Louvre under museum number Sb 06399 and is part of the large corpus excavated at Susa in the early twentieth century.
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 marker, then records two separate entries: one item counted in small units (2), followed by a large-quantity unit (1 of N39B, a higher-order numeral), then three tens-units of a second commodity. A further entry repeats a similar structure — 2 small units and again 3 tens-units of the same or a related commodity class. The final line introduces two more sign-groups whose quantities are either absent or lost. The rest cannot be read. Because proto-Elamite remains undeciphered, what exactly is being counted — whether grain, livestock, or personnel — cannot be determined.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [Sign M157~a+M342] [M032], 2 (units) Line 2: [M145~c], 1 (large unit, N39B) Line 3: [M206~fa], 3 (tens-units, N14) Line 4: [M158] [M032], 2 (units) Line 5: [M206~fa], 3 (tens-units, N14) Line 6: [M157+M059] [M305+M342] (quantities not recorded or lost)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M157~a+M342|# M032 , 2(N01) M145~c , 1(N39B) M206~fa# , 3(N14) M158# M032 , 2(N01) M206~fa , 3(N14) |M157+M059| |M305+M342|#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 010. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008208) — 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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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.