Position in chronology
MDP 17, 046
About this tablet
One of the earliest administrative records in human history, this small clay tablet comes from Susa (in modern Iran) and dates to the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE. It belongs to the proto-Elamite or late Uruk accounting tradition — a system of record-keeping that preceded any fully deciphered writing. The tablet tallies quantities of unidentified commodities (animals, goods, or institutional categories) using numerical notation alongside signs that cannot yet be read phonetically. It is part of a large archive of such accounting tablets recovered from Susa, which show that complex economic administration was happening simultaneously in southwestern Iran and in Mesopotamia at the very dawn of literacy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening entry is broken and only partially legible. The second line records a commodity or category designated by a cluster of unread signs, with a total count of 125 units (two sixties plus five tens). The third line records a second item — again unread — totalling 15 units (one ten plus five ones). The fourth line records a third item, totalling 30 units (three tens). The signs naming these commodities remain undeciphered; only the numbers are clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[M327+M342?] , M054 |M377+M383+M377| M054 M388 M066 M314 [M128?] M096 , 2(×60) 5(×10) M009 M321~fa[?] , 1(×10) 5(×1) M346 , 3(×10)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M327+M342|#? , M054 |M377+M383+M377| M054 M388 M066 M314 M128# M096 , 2(N45) 5(N14) M009 M321~fa# , 1(N14) 5(N01) M346 , 3(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 046. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008244) — 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.