Position in chronology
MDP 17, 047
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period — roughly 3200–2900 BCE, making it among the earliest written records in the world. It records quantities of commodities or animals against a series of as-yet-undeciphered sign groups, functioning as an accounting or inventory document. Proto-Elamite writing has not been fully deciphered, so the specific commodities and their administrators remain unknown, but the numerical notations (using the proto-Elamite counting system) are clearly readable. Tablets like this one are the bureaucratic heartbeat of one of humanity's first urban civilizations — tallies kept by temple or palace administrators managing the flow of goods.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a ledger of some kind. Each line pairs an unread category sign with a quantity: one entry records a certain number in one numerical unit, another a count in a different unit, and so on down six or seven lines. The exact goods — whether grain, livestock, or something else entirely — cannot yet be named because the writing system has not been deciphered. What survives is essentially a column of 'Item X: quantity Y' repeated, the bookkeeping of an ancient Susian official whose words we can count but not yet read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobverse: [M136~c] [M305+M332]#? x , 1(N30C@b) [M379~g] , 1(N30D@b) [M057] [M243~j] , 1(N39B) [M386~a] [M240] [M263] [M371] x , 1(N01) 1(N14)# [M243~j]# , 1(N39B) 1(N24) [M002] , 1(N30C@b) 1(N14)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M136~c , |M305+M332|#? x , 1(N30C@b) M379~g , 1(N30D@b) M057 M243~j , 1(N39B) M386~a M240 M263 M371 x , 1(N01) 1(N14)# M243~j# , 1(N39B) 1(N24) M002 , 1(N30C@b) 1(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 047. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008245) — 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.