Position in chronology
RA 050, 202 01
About this tablet
A small Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the earliest writing systems ever used, and still largely undeciphered. The tablet records what appear to be commodity entries, each paired with a numerical notation of '1 N01' (a basic counting unit), arranged in the columnar format typical of early bookkeeping. Like thousands of similar tablets found at Susa, this was almost certainly produced by a temple or palace administrator tracking goods, animals, or rations — the clay paperwork of one of humanity's first bureaucracies. Because Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered, we can recognize the structure and numbers but not the meaning of the individual signs.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists a series of entries — each naming one or more commodity or category signs alongside a count of '1 unit' — repeated across roughly eight or nine lines. Several entries are too damaged or too poorly understood to read. The overall record looks like a short inventory or allocation list: item, item, count of one; item, item, count of one — repeated down the tablet. The final lines are partially broken. The script itself has not yet been deciphered, so while the accounting structure is clear, the actual goods and names recorded here remain unknown.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[line 1] x , [line 2] x x M367~e , 1(N01) [line 3] M367~e M001 x M372 , 1(N01) [line 4] M371 M219 x x , [...] [line 5] x x M097~h M218 , 1(N01) [line 6] |M096+M029|? M218~c M066 , 1(N01) [line 7] M230 , [...] [line 8] x M001 M219 M151~e M371~c M066 x [line 9] x , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
x , x x M367~e , 1(N01) M367~e M001 x M372 , 1(N01) M371 M219 x x , [...] x x M097~h M218 , 1(N01) |M096+M029|? M218~c M066 , 1(N01) M230 , [...] x M001 M219 M151~e M371~c M066 x x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — RA 050, 202 01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009480) — 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.