Position in chronology
MDP 17, 343
About this tablet
A badly fragmented proto-cuneiform accounting tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, among the very earliest writing in human history. The surviving signs record quantities of goods or commodities alongside numerical notations, in the terse columnar style typical of early Mesopotamian and Elamite administrative record-keeping. Most of the commodity signs cannot yet be securely identified, which is normal for this early stage of the script: many proto-Elamite / proto-cuneiform signs from Susa still lack established readings. The tablet is too damaged and fragmentary for any continuous sense to be recovered, but its structure — commodity sign, then numeral — is the classic format of an ancient inventory or ration list.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of entries, each pairing an unidentified commodity or category with a number — mostly '1' each time, with at least one entry recording a different unit (N24). The commodity signs are not yet fully deciphered. Several lines are too broken to read at all, and two entries end in signs that are completely unidentifiable. What survives is essentially a short inventory: item, quantity one; item, quantity one — the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [...] 1 M255 M096[?] [...] [...] [...] [...] 1 M386~a M295~s M110~a M297 M066 , 1 [...] M327[?] M219 M218 , 1 M248~f x [...] [...] x , 1(N24) M218 , 1 x x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- M255, M096, M386~a, M295~s, M110~a, M297, M066, M327, M219, M218, M248~f — Proto-cuneiform/proto-Elamite logograms identified by their numerical codes in the sign list; their precise lexical meanings are not yet established. Administrative function is inferred from parallels and context.
- 1(N01) — The basic unit numeral in the round-impression system; what commodity or measure it quantifies cannot be determined from surviving context.
- 1(N24) — A higher-order numerical sign; its precise value in the metrological hierarchy depends on the counting system being used, which is not recoverable from this fragment alone.
- M218 — Appears in contexts suggesting a subtotal or section-divider function, but this is inferred from parallels, not confirmed independently in this tablet.
- #? (sign uncertainty markers) — The '#' and '?' in the transliteration (M096#?, M327#?) indicate the reading is uncertain even for the original editors; the photograph confirms damaged surfaces at these points but cannot resolve the uncertainty.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the central fragment (the main inscribed piece) shows clearly impressed cuneiform-precursor wedges and round/oval impressions consistent with proto-cuneiform numerical signs (N01-type round impressions are visible). The surface is heavily eroded and the tablet is broken into multiple pieces; several signs on the edges and the smaller flanking fragments are too damaged or obscured to read independently. The bottom fragment and reverse appear largely uninscribed or too weathered to yield sign readings. The sign clusters in the upper-left area of the main face show overlapping complex signs consistent with the multi-element sign groups cited in the transliteration (M386~a, M295~s type clusters), though individual sign identification at this resolution cannot be confirmed with certainty. The transliteration's use of '#' markers (indicating uncertain readings) and 'x' placeholders aligns with the visible damage pattern. No discrepancy between photo and transliteration can be firmly established, but neither can the transliteration be independently verified sign-by-sign from the photograph. This is a proto-cuneiform text from the Susa/Proto-Elamite administrative corpus; comparable tablets are published in MDP 17 and treated in Damerow & Englund's work on proto-Elamite accounting.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 15, 2026 · 1745 in / 876 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N01)# M255 M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M386~a M295~s M110~a M297 M066 , 1(N01) [...] M327#? M219 M218 , 1(N01) M248~f x [...] , [...] x , 1(N24) M218 , 1(N01) x x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 343. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008541) — 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.