Position in chronology
MDP 17, 201
About this tablet
A small, heavily fragmented proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE. Proto-Elamite is the earliest writing system used in ancient Iran and remains undeciphered: the signs record quantities and categories of goods — probably animals, grain, or labour — but their precise meanings are still unknown to scholars. The surviving lines preserve a handful of commodity or classifier signs alongside numerical notations (1 and 8 in the N01 counting system), the bare skeleton of what was once a record of institutional accounting. The tablet is catalogued in the Louvre as Sb 06344 and published in the Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse series.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet records at least two numerical entries: a quantity of 1 and a quantity of 8, each associated with clusters of administrative signs whose meanings remain unknown. Several additional signs appear in what may be a heading or rubric line, followed by further classifier and commodity signs. Large portions of the text are broken away and lost. What survives is the bare numerical and categorical framework of an ancient accounting document — the rest is too damaged or still undeciphered to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [Sign M388] x [Sign M377~e] [Sign M049~d] [Sign M325~e] [Sign M386~a(?)] [...] , [...] Line 2: [...] , [...] 1(N01) Line 3: x [Sign M388] [Sign M066] [Sign M352~o] [Sign M251~c2] [Sign M066] Line 4: [...] , 8(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M388 x M377~e M049~d M325~e M386~a#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01)# x M388 M066 M352~o# M251~c2 M066 [...] , 8(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 201. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008399) — 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.