Position in chronology
MDP 06, 208
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet in the Proto-Elamite script, made at Susa in what is now southwestern Iran during the late Uruk period (roughly the late 4th millennium BCE), one of the earliest writing systems in the world alongside early Sumerian cuneiform. Proto-Elamite remains largely undeciphered — scholars can identify individual signs and the numerical notation system, but cannot yet read most of the underlying language or translate full sentences. What survives here is a series of short entries, each pairing a cluster of signs (likely commodities, categories, or institutional designations) with a small numeral, the everyday bookkeeping of a Susa household or institution some 5,000 years ago.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a set of short accounting entries, badly broken, written in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script. Each line lists a short string of signs — probably naming a commodity, a place, or an institution — followed by a small number: '2', then '1', then '1', then a gap, then '1' again, and finally a larger recorded amount. Because Proto-Elamite has not yet been fully deciphered, we cannot say what goods or persons these entries refer to; what survives shows only the skeleton of a bookkeeping record — items counted out in small quantities, line after line, in what was probably a household or institutional account at Susa.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/line 1) [......] M175, M218, M003 (variant c) , 2(N01) [units] M376 , [......] (Line 2) [......] M218 [damaged sign] , 1(N01) [unit] (Line 3) M218, M250 (variant ba), M386 (variant a), M240, M376 , 1(N01) [unit] (Line 4) M044 [......] , [......] (Line 5) M240, [damaged sign], M376 , 1(N01) [unit] (Line 6) [damaged sign], |M218+M099| (compound, damaged/uncertain), M240, M370, M376 , 1(N08A) [unit]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] M175 M218 M003~c , 2(N01)#? M376# , [...] [...] M218# x , 1(N01)# M218 M250~ba# M386~a M240 M376 , 1(N01) M044 [...] , [...] M240 x M376# , 1(N01) x |M218+M099|#? M240 M370 M376 , 1(N08A)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 208. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008008) — 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.