Position in chronology
MDP 17, 229
About this tablet
A small Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the earliest written records in the world. It records quantities of commodities or categories of goods under sign-labels that have not yet been fully deciphered, with numerical totals expressed in the Proto-Elamite counting system. Tablets like this were the bookkeeping tools of temple or palace administrators tracking redistributed goods. Proto-Elamite writing remains largely undeciphered, so the precise commodities and personnel named here are still unknown to us.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of commodities with their quantities, though the specific goods recorded cannot yet be read with certainty. The entries run roughly: [damaged entry] — 5 large units; [damaged entry] — 2 large units; [two sign-labels] — 3 small units; [one sign-label] — 7 large units; [two sign-labels] — 3 small units. The signs naming the goods remain undeciphered; what survives clearly are the numbers themselves.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] |M106~2+M288| M256~b M041~d M288 , 5(N14) [...] , 2(N14) M038~e M295~e M288 , 3(N01) M288 , 7(N14) M295~ee M288 , 3(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] |M106~2+M288|# M256~b M041~d M288 , 5(N14) [...] , 2(N14)# M038~e M295~e M288 , 3(N01) M288 , 7(N14) M295~ee M288 , 3(N01)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 229. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008427) — 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.