Position in chronology
MDP 17, 121
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in what is now southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, making it among the very earliest written records humanity possesses. It records quantities of goods or commodities assigned to categories or officials, using numerical notations alongside pictographic signs that have not yet been fully deciphered. Tablets like this are the direct ancestors of all writing: accountants at major urban centres began pressing these systematic records into clay to track the flow of commodities through their institutions. Because so many proto-Elamite signs remain undeciphered, the specific goods and the names of any persons involved cannot yet be read with confidence.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Several entries listing quantities of unidentified goods or categories: the first entry records 3 units of one type, followed by a group of 2 units. A third entry notes 1 unit plus an additional smaller measure of one commodity, and the fourth gives 1 measure plus 2 smaller measures of another. A fifth entry records 2 units, a sixth entry 1 unit of a category marked by a repeated sign with an unread sign between, and the final entry gives a count of 2 large units plus 1 smaller measure. The signs labelling the commodities or categories remain undeciphered; the numbers are clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M386~a M131 M218 M288 , 3(N39B) [...] , 2(N30C) M219 M371~a , 1(N39B) 1(N24) [x] M288[?] , 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...] , 2(N30C)[?] M371 M009 M371 , 1(N39B) [x] , 2(N01) 1(N24)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M386~a M131 M218 M288 , 3(N39B) [...] , 2(N30C) M219 M371~a , 1(N39B) 1(N24) x M288# , 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...] , 2(N30C)# M371 M009 M371 , 1(N39B) x , 2(N01) 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 121. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008319) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.