Position in chronology
MDP 17, 110
About this tablet
A small proto-Elamite accounting tablet from ancient Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–2900 BCE. The signs are proto-Elamite — a writing system related to but distinct from Mesopotamian cuneiform, and still largely undeciphered. The tablet records quantities of one or more commodities under a heading sign, with numerical notations using the standard proto-Elamite numerical system, almost certainly representing an administrative tally of goods managed by an institutional household or storehouse. It is historically significant as evidence of early complex record-keeping at Susa, one of the earliest literate cities in the ancient Near East, at a time when accounting drove the invention of writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet opens with a heading or category sign of unknown meaning. What follows is a series of entries, each pairing a commodity sign (or two) with a quantity: one large unit here, one large unit there, then one medium count, then three medium counts, and so on through several damaged lines. The final surviving entry gives a single numeral that likely represents a grand total. Much of the middle portion is too damaged to read. In essence, this is a balance sheet — someone at Susa carefully tallied quantities of goods across several categories, and the last line summed them up.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine|M157+M153| [heading/rubric sign] M286 |M036+1(N30D)|[damaged], 1(N14) [large numerical unit, circular impression] |M036+1(N30D)|[damaged], 1(N14) M305 M388 M297, 1(N39B) [...] M297, 3(N39B) M081[damaged] |M036+1(N30D)|[damaged], [...] M297, 2(N39B) 1(N24) M388[damaged] [...], [...] [...], [...] 2(N39B)[damaged] 1(N24) 1(N14) 1(N34) [grand total or summary numeral]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M157+M153| , M286 |M036+1(N30D)|# , 1(N14) n(n@b) |M036+1(N30D)|# , 1(N14) M305 M388 M297 , 1(N39B) [...] M297 , 3(N39B) M081# |M036+1(N30D)|# , [...] M297 , 2(N39B) 1(N24) M388# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N39B)# 1(N24) 1(N14) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 110. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008308) — 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.