Position in chronology
MDP 17, 043
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), now in the Louvre. It records a list of approximately fourteen entries, each consisting of a group of undeciphered signs — likely designating a commodity, person, or institutional category — followed by a quantity of one unit, with a final line giving what appears to be a total of seventeen. Proto-Elamite remains undeciphered as a script, so the signs cannot be rendered as words; the structure, however, is unmistakably that of a formal accounting document. Tablets like this one represent some of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping in human history, predating any readable language and testifying to the administrative complexity of early urban society at Susa.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists roughly fourteen separate entries, each recording one unit of some commodity or category (the signs for which we cannot yet read). Each line names a different item or group, tallied as a single unit. At the bottom, the scribe added up all the entries: the total comes to seventeen. The tablet is essentially an inventory or account sheet — the world's earliest kind of bookkeeping — but because proto-Elamite has never been deciphered, we can read the numbers without being able to say what was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], M387~hb M388 M057~a M029~b M057~a | compound sign |, 1 | compound sign |, [1] M390# M128 M096 | compound sign |, 1 M254~a M058 M058 M057~a | compound sign |, 1 M124 M386~a M386~a M066 | compound sign |, 1 M124 M390 M338~b M066 | compound sign |, 1 M240~e M347 M371 | compound sign |, 1 M124# M218# M032 M096 | compound sign |, 1 M124 M218 M219 M218 | compound sign |, 1 M066 M352~n [commodity sign] | compound sign |, 1 M218~b M372 | compound sign |, 1 [x x] | compound sign |, 1 [...] | compound sign |, 1 | compound sign | [totalling sign], 1(N14) 7(N01) [= 17]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , M387~hb# M388 M057~a M029~b M057~a |M217+M124| , 1(N01) |M217+M388| , [1(N01)] M390# M128 M096 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M254~a M058 M058 M057~a |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M124 M386~a M386~a M066 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M124 M390 M338~b M066 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M240~e M347 M371 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M124# M218# M032 M096 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M124 M218 M219 M218 |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M066 M352~n |M096+M139| |M217+M388| , 1(N01) M218~b M372 |M217+M388| , 1(N01)# x x |M217+M388|# , 1(N01)# [...] |M217+M388|# , 1(N01)# |M217+M388|# |M217+M124| , 1(N14) 7(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 043. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008241) — 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.