Position in chronology
MDP 17, 139
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite or late Uruk-period accounting tablet from Susa (in what is now southwestern Iran), dated to roughly 3200–2900 BCE — among the earliest written records from that site. The tablet records quantities of commodities or goods distributed to or collected from named categories, using a numerical notation system that scholars have partially decoded even though the underlying language and most sign meanings remain undeciphered. The circular punch-holes visible on both faces are characteristic features of Proto-Elamite tablets and may serve as cancellation or authentication marks. As one of thousands of such tablets from Susa, it forms part of humanity's earliest administrative archive outside Mesopotamia proper.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a single classifier sign, then lists entries pairing commodity or category signs with numerical values: two units of one commodity (the sign group M001 + M139), then one large unit (1 × N14, roughly '10') of another (M099 + M102~k2), followed by further entries that are partially broken. One surviving line records thirty-one units (3 × N14 + 1 × N01) against an unread category. The final legible lines record two sign groups in the M057 family against quantities now lost. The rest is too damaged or broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM327~p , M001 M139 , 2(N01)[?] [...] [...] M099 M102~k2 , 1(N14) M115~b M146 [...] , [...] [...] M089[?] M250~m M377 M347 M371 [...] , [...] [x] , 3(N14) 1(N01) M057~b1 M057~a2 , [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M327~p , M001 M139 , 2(N01)#? [...] [...] M099 M102~k2 , 1(N14) M115~b M146 [...] , [...] [...] M089# M250~m M377 M347 M371 [...] , [...] x , 3(N14) 1(N01) M057~b1 M057~a2 , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 139. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008337) — 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.