Position in chronology
MDP 17, 405
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE — and written in proto-Elamite, one of the world's earliest but still undeciphered writing systems. The tablet records quantities of commodities or categories of goods, each paired with a numerical notation using the standard proto-Elamite counting system. Like thousands of similar tablets from Susa, this is bureaucratic accounting: someone tracking allocations, disbursements, or inventories of items we cannot yet name. The script remains undeciphered, so the specific goods and their destination are unknown, but the structure — sign, then number — is unmistakably that of an institutional ledger.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This fragment lists several categories of goods (or animals, or people — we cannot yet read the signs) alongside quantities: five units of one thing, then two of another (M376), then one of something else (M009), two more of M376, one more unnamed entry, and finally one unit under the classifier M346. Several lines are too broken to read. The exact commodities remain unknown because proto-Elamite has not been deciphered, but the accounting structure is clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...], 5 [x], [...] M376, 2 |M327+M059~d|(?), [...] M009(#), 1 M376(#?), 2 [...], 1 [x], n M346, 1
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 5(N01)# x , [...] M376 , 1(N08A) |M327+M059~d|? , [...] M009# , 1(N01) M376#? , 1(N08A) [...] , 1(N01)# x , n M346 , 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 405. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008603) — 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.