Position in chronology
Sb 15222
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern south-western Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's earliest writing systems, still largely undeciphered. The tablet records quantities of one or more commodities (denoted by undeciphered signs) in the numerical notation characteristic of Proto-Elamite accounting. It is a fragment of the vast bureaucratic apparatus that managed goods — likely grain, animals, or labour — at ancient Susa. The tablet is now in the Louvre (Sb 15222) and survives in several joining and near-joining pieces with significant surface damage.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with what appears to be a heading or document-type marker whose meaning is still unknown. It then lists several entries: the first commodity sign group is paired with a quantity of roughly 1 + 2 + 1 units (in the Proto-Elamite mixed numerical system); a second entry with an additional classifier sign records 3 + 3 + 2 + 1 units of the same or a related commodity; a third entry records a smaller quantity of approximately 1 + 1 + 1 units. At least one further line is too broken to read. The tablet closes with a single capacity measure — a kind of subtotal or summary figure. Because Proto-Elamite writing remains undeciphered, we can read the numbers but not the names of the commodities or the people involved.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157# [heading/rubric sign — function unknown] M386~da M304 M297 : 1(N01) 2(N30C) 1(N30D)# [x] M139 M297 : 3(N01) 3(N39B) 2(N30C) 1(N30D) M297#? : 1(N39B)#? 1(N30D) 1(N39C) [...] : [...] 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
M157# , M386~da M304 M297 , 1(N01) 2(N30C) 1(N30D)# x M139 M297 , 3(N01) 3(N39B) 2(N30C) 1(N30D) M297#? , 1(N39B)#? 1(N30D) 1(N39C) [...] , [...] 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — Sb 15222. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P272828) — 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.