Position in chronology
MDP 17, 297 + 299
About this tablet
A small, badly broken proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the very earliest writing in the world. Each line records a sign-group (probably denoting a commodity, institution, or commodity category) followed by the numeral 1, the classic format of an ancient inventory or allocation list. Proto-Elamite writing has not been deciphered: the signs cannot be read phonetically, so the commodities or categories involved remain unknown. This fragment is significant simply as physical evidence of early administrative record-keeping in the Elamite world, contemporary with the earliest Sumerian tablets from Uruk.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each surviving line appears to record a single entry: some category of goods or commodity — we cannot yet read what — with a count of one unit. Seven such entries are preserved in whole or in part, though several are damaged or broken away entirely. The tablet is too fragmentary, and proto-Elamite too poorly understood, to say more than that this is a list of single-unit items in an administrative inventory. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M386~a, M024, M371[?], 1 [M329?] [...] , [...] [...] M371[?], 1 M125~a, M124[?], M259, M229~e1, 1[?] M035, M066, 1 M029~e[?], M124[?], 1 M218, M242~ab, 1
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M386~a M024 M371# , 1(N01)# M329#? [...] , [...] [...] M371# , 1(N01) M125~a M124#? M259 M229~e1 , 1(N01)# M035 M066 , 1(N01) M029~e#? M124#? , 1(N01) M218 M242~ab , 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 297 + 299. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008495) — 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.