Position in chronology
MDP 06, 201
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period (roughly the later 4th millennium BCE) — one of the very earliest phases of writing anywhere in the world. It is a numerical/commodity account: a scribe listed a series of undeciphered proto-Elamite signs, each paired with a quantity recorded in the archaic numeral notation of the system (small drilled circles and other impressed marks), evidently tallying goods, animals, or produce under different category headings. Proto-Elamite script remains largely undeciphered, so while we can read the numbers with confidence, the commodities and categories themselves are still mostly a mystery to modern scholars. Its interest lies precisely in that mystery: it is a working economic record from one of the world's first bureaucracies, written in a script we still cannot fully read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet. At the top is a heading sign whose exact meaning we don't know — maybe a document type or a general category. Below it come nine line items, each naming some commodity or category (all in an undeciphered script) followed by a quantity: the first entry lists a damaged sign for '1 large unit and 7 units,' the next few list small counts of 1, 2, and 4 units, then a recurring category appears three times with quantities of roughly 2, 2, and 1 in different notations, and two more entries record 9 units and 2 units of another commodity. The final line names another commodity but its quantity has not survived or was never recorded. The back of the tablet is blank. In short: an ancient bookkeeper's inventory list, written in a system we can count but can't yet fully translate.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineHeading/rubric sign: M157 Entry 1: M319 M032 (commodity/category, sign M032 damaged) — 1(N14) 7(N01) Entry 2: M321~j — 1(N01) Entry 3: M321 (variant uncertain) — 2(N01) Entry 4: M005 — 4(N01) Entry 5: M376 — 1(N34) 3(N01) 1(N08) Entry 6: M310 (uncertain) M376 — 1(N14) 9(N01) Entry 7: M149~a — 9(N01) Entry 8: M381 (uncertain) M149~a — 2(N01) Entry 9: M218 M039~b (variant uncertain) — [no quantity preserved] (Reverse: uninscribed / blank)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
M157# , M319 M032 , 1(N14) 7(N01)# M321~j# , 1(N01) M321#? , 2(N01) M005 , 4(N01) M376 , 1(N34) 3(N01) 1(N08) M310#? M376 , 1(N14) 9(N01) M149~a , 9(N01) M381#? M149~a , 2(N01) M218 M039~b? ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 201. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008001) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.