Position in chronology
MDP 17, 192
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, dating to approximately 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's earliest writing systems, still undeciphered. The tablet records quantities of commodities or goods using a numerical notation system, grouped under sign-categories whose meanings are not yet known. Tablets like this were used by administrators at Susa to track distributions, receipts, or inventories of goods within a complex urban economy. Proto-Elamite is the most widespread early writing system after proto-cuneiform, and this fragment is a typical example of the administrative record-keeping that sustained ancient Iranian cities.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of commodity entries with associated quantities, but because proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered, the names of the goods cannot be read — only the numbers survive clearly. The entries appear to list several commodity categories (designated here by their sign-list codes), each followed by amounts: one entry totals roughly eleven units, another thirteen, another four, and so on. Several lines are broken and their quantities are lost. The overall structure is that of a running account or inventory — a ledger page whose columns of figures survive while the words that would tell us what was being counted have not yet yielded their meaning.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M376, 1(N14) 1(N01) M124, 1(N14)[?] [...] [...] M124 M374~c M124, 1(N14) 3(N01) [...], [...] 3(N01) M376, 3(N01) 1(N08A) M374~c, 1(N01) M376 M203~a, [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M376# , 1(N14) 1(N01)# M124# , 1(N14)#? [...] [...] M124# M374~c M124 , 1(N14) 3(N01)# [...] , [...] 3(N01)# M376 , 3(N01)# 1(N08A) M374~c , 1(N01) M376 M203~a , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 192. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008390) — 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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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.