Position in chronology
MDP 17, 062
About this tablet
An administrative accounting tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3300–3100 BCE), written in proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform script. It records quantities of one or more commodities — the exact nature of the goods is unknown, as the signs used have not yet been deciphered — organized in rows with numerical notations. This is essentially a ledger entry, among the earliest attempts by human beings to record economic data in writing. The tablet is too damaged and the script too poorly understood for a full translation, but its numerical entries (quantities in the Uruk sexagesimal system) are clear.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists several entries, each pairing one or more unidentified commodity signs with a quantity. The first legible entry records a quantity of 2 large units and 1 medium unit of something (M124/M288 category). The next entry, involving a cluster of three signs, records 6 large units and 2 small units. A third entry records 1 large unit under a different sign group. The remaining lines are too damaged to read. The signs themselves cannot yet be translated into words — the script is still largely undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Sign cluster M175+M136], [M124] [M288], 2(N14) 1(N24) [M128~ca] [M377~e] [M347] [M371]# [[M288]], 6(N14) 2(N01) [M195] [M288], 1(N14) [M147~d] [M101] [M288], [...] [M288]#?, [...] [x] [M288], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M175+M136| , M124 M288 , 2(N14) 1(N24) M128~ca M377~e M347 M371# [M288] , 6(N14) 2(N01) M195 M288 , 1(N14) M147~d M101 M288 , [...] M288#? , [...] x M288 , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 062. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008260) — 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.