Position in chronology
MDP 17, 237
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE — and written in Proto-Elamite, one of the world's earliest undeciphered writing systems. The tablet records numerical quantities alongside commodity signs whose precise meanings remain unknown, typical of the accounting records that ancient Susa's administrators used to track goods and resources. Because Proto-Elamite has not been deciphered, only the numerical values (1, 2, 5, 6) can be read with confidence; the signs beside them identify commodities or categories that remain opaque. The tablet is now in the Louvre, catalogued as Sb 22403, and represents the kind of everyday economic record-keeping that drove the invention of writing itself.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists quantities against unidentified commodity categories: one unit of [unknown good M228], two units of [M036-compound], six units of [unknown], six more units of [M036-compound], then a damaged line with repeated signs M101 alongside M097 and M175 whose quantities are lost, followed by one unit of [unknown], and finally five units of [M371/M036-compound]. The numbers are clear; what exactly is being counted cannot be read. The rest of the entries are too damaged or undeciphered to render in any language.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our enginex M228, 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|, 2(N01) [...], 6(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|, 6(N01) [...] M101 M101 x M097~h? M175 [...], [...] [...], 1(N01) x M371? |M036+1(N30D)|, 5(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 M228 , 1(N01)# |M036+1(N30D)|# , 2(N01) [...] , 6(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 6(N01) [...] M101 M101 x M097~h? M175 [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) x M371#? |M036+1(N30D)|# , 5(N01)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 237. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008435) — 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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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.