Position in chronology
MDP 17, 140
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE — among the very earliest attempts at record-keeping in human history. It lists commodities or institutional categories alongside numerical notations using the archaic sexagesimal system (units of one and ten). The script belongs to the proto-Elamite or late proto-cuneiform tradition, and the signs remain largely undeciphered: we can read the numbers clearly, but most of the commodity or category signs cannot yet be linked to known words. This tablet is a rare witness to the birth of writing as an administrative tool, used by early bureaucrats at Susa to track goods or allocations.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records several categories of goods or administrative entries, each paired with a quantity. Most entries carry a count of eleven (ten plus one); one entry records two, and an opening entry records one. The commodity or category names attached to these numbers remain undeciphered — the signs are among the earliest written symbols ever made, and their meanings have not yet been recovered. Several lines at the beginning and end of the tablet are broken away and lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M032(?), [...] 1 [x] M314 M032(?), 1(×10) [...] [...], 2 M147~e M218 M386~a M223 M139 M388 M066 M066, 11 (i.e., 1×10 + 1) [...] x M218, 11 M145 M066 M314, 11 M263 [...], [...] [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M032#? , [...] 1(N01)# x M314# M032#? , 1(N14)# [...] [...] , 2(N01)# M147~e M218 M386~a M223 M139 M388 M066 M066 , 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] x M218 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M145 M066 M314 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M263 [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 140. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008338) — 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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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.