Position in chronology
MDP 17, 317
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3100 BCE — and written in proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform script. It records commodity entries alongside numerical notations, the standard format of early accounting tablets used to track goods and allocations in a temple or palace economy. The signs themselves remain undeciphered in any linguistic sense: the script has not been read as a spoken language, so only the numerical values and the administrative structure can be understood. This tablet is one of thousands of such accounting documents from early Susa, testifying to the city's role as a major administrative centre at the very dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Several entries list categories of goods alongside quantities — one unit of commodity M010~6, totalling 1 plus 1(N30C); a damaged entry under M103; two units plus 1(N39B) of M010~6; and further entries under M387 and M011 whose quantities are broken away. The remaining lines record 1(N39B) and 1(N30C). Because the signs have not been deciphered as a spoken language, we can only say: this is a list of things counted, in small quantities, by an ancient accountant at Susa — the rest is lost to both damage and the undeciphered nature of the script.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M388 M009(?) M318~a1(?) M371 M036(?) , [...] M010~6 , 1(N01) 1(N30C) M103 [...] , [...] M010~6(?) , 2(N01) 1(N39B) M387 M011(?) , [...] [...] , 1(N39B) 1(N30C)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M388 M009# M318~a1 M371 M036# , [...] M010~6 , 1(N01) 1(N30C) M103 [...] , [...] M010~6# , 2(N01) 1(N39B) M387 M011? , [...] [...] , 1(N39B) 1(N30C)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 317. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008515) — 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.