Position in chronology
MDP 17, 272
About this tablet
A highly fragmentary proto-cuneiform administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE. It records quantities — expressed in the archaic numerical notation system using N01 and N30D number signs — against commodity or category signs whose precise meanings remain unestablished. Tablets like this are among the very earliest written documents in human history, produced by temple or palace administrators to track goods, animals, or labor. The signs are so early that many have not yet been conclusively read, making this fragment a window into the very birth of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken accounting record. Several entries list commodity or category signs followed by numbers: one entry records 2 units, another 4 units, another 1 unit, another 5 units, and a final readable entry notes 1 unit plus 1 larger unit (roughly '1 and 1 ten'). The names of the commodities being counted are written in signs that scholars have not yet been able to read with certainty. The rest of the tablet is too damaged or missing to recover.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M096 M004 M218 x , 2(N01) x M390(?) , 4(N01) [...] , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|(?) , 5(N01) M240 M370~c M004 [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) 1(N30D)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M096# M004# M218# x , 2(N01) x M390? , 4(N01) [...] , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)|#? , 5(N01) M240# M370~c# M004# [...], [...] [...] , 1(N01) 1(N30D)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 272. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008470) — 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.