Position in chronology
MDP 17, 246
About this tablet
A severely fragmented proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the late fourth millennium BCE (Uruk period). It records a series of commodity entries, each followed by a small numeral — almost certainly a tally of goods or animals passing through an institutional storehouse or redistribution center. The signs themselves belong to the as-yet-undeciphered proto-Elamite script, so individual commodity names cannot be read with confidence; what survives is the accounting structure: commodity sign(s) followed by quantity. This tablet is a snapshot of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping at one of the ancient Near East's most important cities, contemporary with the very first writing in Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an accounting list. Each line names a category of goods — their exact nature is still unknown because the script has not been fully deciphered — and records a quantity next to it: mostly 1 unit each, with one entry showing 2 units plus a sub-unit measure. The tablet is too broken and the script too poorly understood to say precisely what commodities were counted or who was responsible. What survives is the skeleton of a careful, bureaucratic tally — someone at Susa was tracking things, counting them, and writing it all down. Several lines are lost to damage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: [M157?] M054 x , 1(N14) M218[?] , 1(N01) M096 , 2(N01) 1(N24) M218 , 1(N01) M066 M352~n[?] , [...] M218 , 1(N01) M058 M297 M066 , 1(N01) [x] M223~b M218 , 1(N01) M099 M371 , 1(N01) M352~n M301 M057~a , 1(N01) M057 M058 M057 , 2(N01) [...] , [...] [M288?] M242~d M097~h[?] , 1(N01)[?]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157#? M054 x , 1(N14) M218# , 1(N01)# M096 , 2(N01) 1(N24) M218 , 1(N01) M066 M352~n# , [...] M218 , 1(N01) M058 M297 M066 , 1(N01) x M223~b M218 , 1(N01) M099 M371 , 1(N01) M352~n M301 M057~a , 1(N01) M057 M058 M057 , 2(N01) [...] , [...] M288# M242~d M097~h#? , 1(N01)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 246. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008444) — 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.