Position in chronology
MDP 17, 332
About this tablet
This is an administrative accounting tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE — making it among the earliest written records in human history. It belongs to the proto-Elamite or late Uruk administrative tradition: a scribe tracking quantities of some commodity or set of commodities, recording entries in a columnar format with numerical notations and sign-groups whose precise meaning remains undeciphered. The tablet is badly damaged and survives in multiple fragments, which the photograph shows reassembled. Like its counterparts from this period, it represents the very birth of bookkeeping — not literature, not law, but the practical need to count and record goods moving through an institutional economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a partially surviving account record. The top line records a quantity of roughly 6 units of something (the exact commodity is unknown) alongside associated signs. A following entry records 3 units. Another line lists a group of signs — possibly naming a commodity or category — with quantities that are too damaged to read with certainty. A further entry gives approximately 4 and 1 sub-units of something else. Another line records 3 and 2 units of a sub-category. A heading or rubric sign appears near the end, followed by what appears to be a grand total of 1 large unit. Much of the tablet is broken, and the signs for the commodities themselves have not yet been deciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine|M317+X| M297 M288, 6(N14)# [...] [...], 3(N14) M005~a M263~1 M387 M219 [...], [...] [...] M099 M102~da, 4(N01)#? 1(N01@b)#? [...] [...], 3(N14@b) 2(N1@b) |M157+M131|#, [...] 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M317+X| M297 M288# , 6(N14)# [...] [...] , 3(N14) M005~a M263~1 M387 M219 [...] , [...] [...] M099 M102~da , 4(N01)#? 1(N01@b)#? [...] [...] , 3(N14@b) 2(N1@b) |M157+M131|# , [...] 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 332. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008530) — 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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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.