Position in chronology
MDP 17, 180
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, among the earliest written records in human history. It belongs to the proto-Elamite or early proto-cuneiform tradition: a ledger recording quantities of commodities (goods, animals, or institutional categories) under sign-labels whose exact meanings remain undeciphered. The signs are not yet a fully readable language but a notational accounting system, tallying small numbers (1, 2, 3) against category heads. Its interest lies precisely in its opacity: it is a witness to the very moment humanity was inventing writing, and we still cannot read most of what it says.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists several categories of goods or commodities — each identified by a sign whose meaning is not yet known — with small quantities beside them: one unit here, two units there, three units in another entry. Some lines are too damaged to read. The reverse and edges of the tablet are blank or illegible. In short: a stock-count or allocation record from one of the world's earliest bureaucracies, where a clerk noted down what was received or distributed, but in a script we have not yet fully decoded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine|M054+M393~f+M054~i|[?] , [...] , 1 (unit) M352~n M003~b M390 [...] , [...] [...] , 2 (unit) M346 , 1 (unit) |M218+M101| x [...] , [...] [...] , 1 (unit) M153 M057~a , 3 (unit)[?] x M057~f[?] x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M054+M393~f+M054~i|# , [...] , 1(N01) M352~n M003~b M390 [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01) M346 , 1(N01) |M218+M101| x [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) M153 M057~a , 3(N01)# x M057~f#? x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 180. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008378) — 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.