Position in chronology
MDP 17, 345
About this tablet
A fragmentary proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), now held in the Louvre. It records quantities of commodities or goods — almost certainly livestock, grain, or labor allocations — using the proto-Elamite numerical system alongside sign sequences whose precise meanings remain undeciphered. Proto-Elamite is the earliest writing system known from ancient Iran, and while its numerical notations are well understood, the commodity signs themselves have not yet been cracked, making tablets like this both tantalizing and frustrating. This tablet is one of thousands from Susa that document a sophisticated administrative economy managed by early urban institutions, even if the exact goods and actors recorded here remain opaque.
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 one or more commodity signs with a numerical quantity. The entries read roughly: [commodity signs] — 1 unit; [commodity signs] — 5 units; [commodity sign] and an unreadable sign — quantity lost; [quantity lost] — 2 units; unreadable signs — quantity lost; [commodity sign] — 2 units; [two commodity signs, the second damaged] — quantity lost; three unreadable signs — quantity lost. The commodity names cannot be translated; only the numbers survive as certain information. Much of the tablet is broken and the rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M009 M318(~a2?) M371 M321 , 1(N01)# [...] [...] M371 M376 , 5(N01) M509 x [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01)# x [...] , [...] [...] M376 , 2(N01) M099 M136#? [...] , [...] x x x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M009 M318~a2 M371 M321 , 1(N01)# [...] [...] M371 M376 , 5(N01) M509 x [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01)# x [...] , [...] [...] M376 , 2(N01) M099 M136#? [...] , [...] x x x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 345. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008543) — 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.