Position in chronology
MDP 17, 168
About this tablet
A small, heavily damaged proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the earliest writing in the world. It records quantities of commodities or institutional allocations using a sign system that has not yet been fully deciphered. Each surviving entry pairs one or more category signs with a numeral, the classic format of proto-Elamite accounting. The tablet is too fragmentary to recover its specific subject, but it belongs to the vast bookkeeping archive that once managed the economy of ancient Susa.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Most of this tablet is broken away or too damaged to read. What survives is a short list of entries, each pairing an undeciphered category sign — probably identifying a type of commodity or an institutional unit — with the numeral '1'. One entry reads something like '[category] M371 M128: 1'; another '[category] M219: 1'; another simply '[damaged]: 1'. The rest is lost. It reads like a tally sheet, almost certainly part of a larger accounting record whose subject we can no longer determine.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [x] M338 [...] , [...] M322~g M388 M317? M024 [...] , [...] [...] M219? , 1(N01) M371 M128~dc , 1(N01) M124? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , x M338# [...] , [...] M322~g# M388# M317#? M024 [...] , [...] [...] M219#? , 1(N01)# M371 M128~dc# , 1(N01)# M124#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 168. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008366) — 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.