Position in chronology
MDP 17, 465
About this tablet
Two fragments from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dating to the Uruk period — among the very earliest moments of writing, roughly 3300–3000 BCE. They appear to be administrative accounting tablets recording quantities of commodities or allocations, each entry marked with a numerical value using the N14 notation system. The signs are proto-cuneiform, the script at its most archaic stage, and many individual sign values remain unconfirmed by modern scholarship. These fragments offer a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic machinery of one of humanity's first urban societies outside Mesopotamia proper.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Each surviving line records what appears to be a commodity or category (represented by signs whose meaning is not yet fully understood) followed by a quantity — consistently '1 unit' per entry for most lines. The final line gives a larger total: 8 units and 5 smaller units. Much of the tablet is broken away, and the signs in the middle of each line cannot be securely identified. What remains is the skeleton of an ancient accounting record, tallying goods or allocations in a system that was still being invented when this clay was pressed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M388 M032 x M096 M288[?], [...] [...] M288, 1(N14) M032 M128~da M096 M288, 1(N14) [...] [...] x M288[?], 1(N14) M103~3 M032 x [...], [...] [...], 8(N14) 5(N01)[?]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M388# M032 x M096 M288#? , [...] [...] M288# , 1(N14) M032 M128~da M096 M288 , 1(N14) [...] [...] x M288# , 1(N14) M103~3 M032 x [...] , [...] [...] , 8(N14)# 5(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 465. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008663) — 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.