Position in chronology
MDP 17, 428
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (in modern southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE — and written in the proto-Elamite script, one of the world's earliest writing systems, which remains undeciphered. The tablet records numerical entries alongside category or commodity signs in a columnar format typical of early accounting: quantities of something — possibly animals, grain, or institutional goods — are tallied using the standard proto-Elamite numerical notation. This is economic bureaucracy at its very earliest, a receipt or ledger kept by an administrator managing resources at one of the ancient Near East's great urban centers. The signs are not yet readable as words in any known language, but the structure — sign cluster, then number — is unambiguous.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists several categories of goods or commodities alongside their quantities. The surviving entries record, in order: a heading or category sign; a group of commodity markers (several of which are too damaged or too poorly understood to name); a quantity of one large unit plus one standard unit; another set of commodity signs with an unknown quantity; a further entry of one standard unit plus two small fractional units; and two more entries, each registering one standard unit. Several lines are too broken to read. The overall sense is a running tally — a bookkeeper's record of amounts received, allocated, or counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [Sign M351~m] Line 2: [M377] [M377] [M388] [M125?] [M102~k2?] [M096?] [...] , [...] Line 3: [...] , 1(N14) 1(N01) Line 4: [M384~d1] [M124] [M251~c3] [M218~b?] [M001?] , [...] Line 5: [M356] [M387] [M218] , 1(N01) 2(N39B) Line 6: [x] , [...] Line 7: [...] [M263] [M281~d?] [x] , 1(N01) Line 8: [...] , [...] 1(N01) 2(N39B)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M351~m , M377 M377 M388 M125# M102~k2#? M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N14) 1(N01) M384~d1 M124 M251~c3 M218~b? M001#? , [...] M356 M387 M218 , 1(N01) 2(N39B) x , [...] [...] M263 M281~d#? x , 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01)# 2(N39B)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 428. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008626) — 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.