Position in chronology
MDP 17, 257
About this tablet
A small group of proto-Elamite or late Uruk-period administrative tablet fragments from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE. The tablets record a short list of commodities or categories, each followed by the numeral '1', with a larger quantity (N14, approximately 10 units) appearing in what may be a summary or sub-total line. Proto-Elamite script of this period remains largely undeciphered — the individual sign values are not phonetically readable — so we can identify the structure (list entries plus counts) but not the specific goods or persons named. These fragments are typical of the earliest complex accounting systems in human history, developed by temple or palace administrators to track goods and disbursements.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists several entries, each apparently recording one unit of some commodity or category (the signs themselves cannot yet be read as words). One line records a larger quantity — roughly ten units — which may serve as a sub-total or summary. The opening and closing lines are broken and partially lost. The overall structure is a ledger: items in, items counted, totals noted. What specifically was being counted remains undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M250~m M058~b M057, 1 [...] M254~a M262 M024 |M218~d+M288| M066, 1 [...], 1 [x] M259 M218, 1 [x] M372, 1 [...] M388, 1(N14) M254~a M262 M024 [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M250~m M058~b M057 , 1(N01)# [...] M254~a# M262 M024 |M218~d+M288| M066 , 1(N01) [...] , 1(N01)# x M259 M218 , 1(N01)# x M372 , 1(N01)# [...] M388 , 1(N14) M254~a M262 M024 [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 257. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008455) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.