Position in chronology
MDP 17, 353
About this tablet
Two fragments of a Proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dated to the late fourth millennium BCE — among the very earliest writing in the world. The tablet records quantities of an unidentified commodity or set of commodities, each entry pairing an undeciphered sign (probably a category label — perhaps a type of animal, goods, or institutional unit) with a numerical value in the Proto-Elamite counting system. Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered: we can read the numbers but not the words, so this tablet tells us that careful record-keeping was happening at Susa at the dawn of literacy, but withholds its exact subject matter. It is held in the Louvre as part of a large archive of early administrative documents excavated at Susa.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists several categories of something — goods, animals, or institutional units we cannot yet name — each followed by a count. One entry records 3 large units; another, 1 large unit and 3 smaller ones; a third, 3 small units alone. A summary or subtotal line near the end gives 3 units of one denomination and 1 of another. The commodity labels remain unread: this is careful, systematic bookkeeping, but the language behind it is still locked.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM111~o with |M036+1(N30D)| — 3(N14) M001 [...] — [...] M264~a — 1(N14) 3(N01) M263~a — 3(N01) [x] — [...] [...] — 3(N14) |M036+1(N30D)| — [...] [...] — 1(N30C)# [and further numerals lost] 3(N1@b) 1(N24@b)#
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M111~o |M036+1(N30D)| , 3(N14) M001 [...] , [...] M264~a , 1(N14) 3(N01) M263~a , 3(N01) x , [...] [...] , 3(N14) |M036+1(N30D)| , [...] [...] , 1(N30C)# n 3(N1@b) 1(N24@b)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 353. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008551) — 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.