Position in chronology
MDP 17, 143
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3200–3000 BCE), one of the earliest stages of writing in human history. It records numerical entries using the archaic impressed-notation system — circles, crescents, and punched marks — that preceded true cuneiform signs. The tablet appears to be an accounting record, tallying commodities or rations under categories that are no longer fully legible due to breakage. Objects like this are among the oldest written documents on earth, and Susa was a key centre where this early accounting technology developed in parallel with, and in contact with, southern Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives of this tablet is a series of numerical entries, each line recording a quantity expressed through a combination of large and small number signs. One entry reads something like: one large unit, one medium unit, one small fractional unit, and three more standard units. Another line records four units of one type, plus one of another, plus one large and one medium and one fractional unit. The lower lines are too broken to read fully, but the last preserved entry shows one unit of a high-value denomination alongside one standard unit. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] , [...] 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39C)? 3(N14) [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39C)? [...] , [...] 2(N01) [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] , [...] 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39C)? 3(N14) [...] , [...] 4(N39B)# 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39C)? [...] , [...] 2(N01)# [...] 1(N34) 1(N14) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 143. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008341) — 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.