Position in chronology
MDP 17, 418
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern southwest Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the world's earliest writing. It records quantities of undeciphered commodities using a numerical system of repeated wedge and circle impressions alongside pictographic signs whose meanings remain unknown. Proto-Elamite script has never been fully deciphered, so what we can read are the numbers and the visual shapes of the category signs, but not the words. Tablets like this one are fascinating because they prove that, at almost the same moment writing was invented in Mesopotamia, a parallel — and still mysterious — accounting tradition was flourishing just to the east at Susa.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet opens with a heading sign whose meaning is lost to us. Below it, a series of entries records commodity groups with their quantities: one unit of [unknown commodity M384/M054]; one large unit of [unknown commodity M297], with the rest of that line broken away; two medium units of something now lost; one unit of [unknown commodity M001]; two large units of M297 again; then a line grouping M122 and M054 whose quantities are broken; a damaged entry giving one small and one medium unit of an unknown item; and finally a single unit of another denomination. The signs between the numbers cannot yet be read in any language.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157~a [heading/rubric — function unknown] M384~e M054 , 1 (unit N01) M297 , 1 (unit N39B) [...] [...] , 2 (units N14) M001 , 1 (unit N01) M297 , 2 (units N39B) M122 M054 [...] , [...] [...] x , 1 (unit N30D) 1 (unit N14) 1 (unit N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157~a , M384~e M054 , 1(N01) M297 , 1(N39B)# [...] [...] , 2(N14) M001 , 1(N01) M297# , 2(N39B) M122# M054# [...] , [...] [...] x , 1(N30D)# 1(N14) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 418. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008616) — 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.