Position in chronology
MDP 17, 408
About this tablet
A small, heavily fragmented proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities of one or more commodities under sign categories that remain undeciphered — proto-Elamite script has not been fully decoded, so we can see the structure of the accounting entry (commodity sign + numeral) but cannot name what is being counted. Tablets like this are the administrative paperwork of one of the world's earliest urban economies, tracking goods — possibly livestock, grain, or craft products — through a centralized institution. The fact that it survives in several joining fragments, now held at the Louvre, reflects both the fragility of these small clay records and the enormous scholarly effort to recover them.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet is too broken and its script too poorly understood to give a full modern paraphrase. What survives shows a series of accounting entries: an unread sign followed by two commodity categories (M218, M297) and a numeral — one unit of something. A second entry names another commodity category (M048~k), but its quantity and context are lost. Two further entries record additional undeciphered commodity signs (M387~ca, M318~a1; M387~o, M009, M298) alongside numerals that are themselves partially damaged. In short: this is a ledger keeping track of quantities of goods whose names we cannot yet read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] x M218 M297, 1(N39B) M048~k [...], [...] [...] M387~ca M318~a1 [...], [...] [...] x M387~o M009 M298# [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] x M218 M297 , 1(N39B) M048~k [...] , [...] [...] M387~ca M318~a1 [...] , [...] [...] x M387~o M009 M298# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 408. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008606) — 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.