Position in chronology
MDP 17, 420
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the very earliest writing systems in the world, still undeciphered. It records a list of commodities or institutional allocations alongside numerical notations, almost certainly as part of an accounting exercise tracking goods managed by a central authority. The signs used belong to the proto-Elamite script, which drew partly on the earlier Uruk period proto-cuneiform tradition from Mesopotamia but developed independently in what is now southwestern Iran. Because proto-Elamite remains undeciphered, we can identify the structure — a heading, several commodity entries each with a quantity, and a final total — but not what specific goods or categories are being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is an administrative record whose specific commodity names we cannot yet read, because the writing system it uses has never been fully deciphered. What we can make out is the accounting structure: a heading entry, followed by several individual lines each recording one unit of something, then a line recording one unit plus a fraction of something else, another line with a fraction and a smaller fraction, a damaged line recording four fractions and another smaller fraction, and finally a grand total of one larger unit. The tablet is, in essence, a tally sheet — the ancient bookkeeper's columns and figures are perfectly legible, but the words for what is being tallied remain, for now, a mystery.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Category/heading sign |M153+M342|?], M292~d, M288 — 1(N01) [Commodity sign x] — 1(N01) [Commodity sign x] [...] — [...] [...] M219, M387, M240, M096 — 1(N01) M217 — 1(N01), 1(N39B) [...] M036 — 1(N39B), 1(N30C) [...] — 4(N39B), 1(N30C) [Total:] 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
|M153+M342|? , M292~d M288 , 1(N01) x , 1(N01) x [...] , [...] [...] M219 M387 M240 M096 , 1(N01) M217 , 1(N01) 1(N39B) [...] M036 , 1(N39B) 1(N30C) [...] , 4(N39B) 1(N30C) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 420. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008618) — 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.