Position in chronology
MDP 17, 148
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite administrative accounting tablet from Susa (modern southwest Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the earliest writing in the world. A scribe has recorded quantities of commodities or animals under category signs whose meanings remain undeciphered, since proto-Elamite has never been fully read. What is clear is the structure: named categories paired with numerical quantities using a base-10 and base-6 notation system. It is a piece of institutional bookkeeping — the ancient equivalent of a warehouse ledger — remarkable for showing that complex bureaucratic record-keeping emerged independently in Elam at almost exactly the same moment as it did in Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a header sign identifying the document's category. What follows is a list of commodities or goods — their names still undeciphered — each paired with a quantity: 42 of one type, 1 of another, then 5, 3, 30, 9, and so on down the list. The largest single entry records 72 units; smaller entries note single items. The rest of the lines are partially damaged or broken. This is, in essence, a stockroom tally: someone counted goods, wrote down the totals, and filed the record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineHeader/title sign: |M377+M320+M377| Entry 1: M388 M218 M352~n M318~c M371 M288~g — 42 [units] Entry 2: [...] M032 — 1 [unit] Entry 3: M376 — 5 [units] Entry 4: M367 — 3 [units] Entry 5: M218[?] M242 M096 — 30 [units] Entry 6: M367 — 9 [units] Entry 7: M376 — [1] + 1(N08A) [units] Entry 8: M288~g — 72 [units] Entry 9: M032 — 1 [unit] Entry 10: M376 — 6 + 1(N08A) [units] Entry 11: M367 — 12 [units]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M377+M320+M377| , M388 M218 M352~n# M318~c M371 M288~g , 4(N14) 2(N01) [...] M032# , 1(N01) M376 , 5(N01) M367# , 3(N01)# M218#? M242# M096 , 3(N14) M367 , 9(N01) M376 , [1(N01)] 1(N08A)# M288~g , 7(N14) 2(N01) M032 , 1(N01) M376 , 6(N01) 1(N08A) M367 , 1(N14) 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 148. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008346) — 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.