Position in chronology
MDP 17, 284
About this tablet
An administrative accounting tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, among the very earliest moments of writing in human history. A scribe recorded quantities of several commodities or commodity categories, each paired with a number expressed in the archaic numerical notation of the day. The signs themselves have not yet been deciphered: this is proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform script at its earliest stage, before the writing system was fully developed. Tablets like this one are precious evidence that bureaucratic record-keeping — the need to count and track goods — was one of the primary engines that drove the invention of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists several categories of goods alongside their quantities: one commodity type appears three times, another twice; a combined entry records seven units; a further entry notes four units of one type and one unit of another. Several lines at the beginning and end are too damaged or broken to read, and at least one sign in the lower entries is illegible. In essence, it is an inventory or delivery record — the ancient equivalent of a warehouse tally sheet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] M362, 3 M367, 2 [...] , [...] M252 M362, 7 M367, 4 M006, 1 [sign illegible] , [...] [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , [...] M362# , 3(N01) M367# , 2(N01) [...] , [...] M252 M362 , 7(N01) M367 , 4(N01) M006 , 1(N01) x , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 284. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008482) — 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.