Position in chronology
MDP 06, 205
About this tablet
This small clay tablet comes from Susa in what is now southwestern Iran, and it is written not in Sumerian cuneiform but in proto-Elamite script — one of the world's oldest and still largely undeciphered writing systems, used around 3100–2900 BCE. It is an administrative record: a short list of entries, each pairing one or more sign-groups with a numeral, most totaling '1' and the last totaling '4'. Because proto-Elamite signs have not yet been fully deciphered, we cannot say with certainty what commodities, animals, or units are being counted — only that this is a bookkeeping tablet, likely tracking goods, rations, or livestock passing through an early accounting office.
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 single mark that seems to serve as a heading or category label for the whole record. Below it, four separate entries each list a short string of two to five sign-groups followed by a count of one unit. A final line lists one recurring sign-group by itself, counted four times. The exact goods or categories behind each sign-group are not known — this is an undeciphered proto-Elamite accounting script — but the structure is clearly that of a small inventory or receipt: several distinct items, each recorded once, and one item recorded four times.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading sign) M157 M381(?) M124 M024~1 M004 M218 M297 M150~a : 1(N01) M102~d M318~a3 M371 M297 M150~a : 1(N01) M218 M259 M371 M223(#) M150~a : 1(N01) M124 M386~a M230 M096 M150~a : 1(N01) M297 M150~a : 4(N01)
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# , M381? M124 M024~1 M004 M218 M297 M150~a , 1(N01) M102~d M318~a3 M371 M297 M150~a , 1(N01) M218 M259 M371 M223# M150~a , 1(N01) M124 M386~a M230 M096 M150~a , 1(N01) M297 M150~a , 4(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 205. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008005) — 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.