Position in chronology
MDP 06, 210
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, in what is now southwestern Iran, dating to the Uruk period (roughly the later fourth millennium BCE) — one of the very earliest writing systems, still undeciphered as a language even though its numerical notations and many of its logographic signs can be partly parsed. The tablet records a short list of commodities or goods, each entry paired with a proto-Elamite numeral (using several distinct number systems visible here as N01, N24, N39B, N45, N14), and ends with what appears to be a summary or total line. It is impossible to say what commodity or institution is actually being tracked, since none of the individual signs (M157, M124, M009, M218, and the rest) have secure semantic readings — but the format is unmistakably that of a bookkeeping record, an accountant's tally from one of the world's first bureaucracies.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This clay tablet is a short accounting note. At the top is a single sign that may serve as a heading or document label. Below it come a series of entries, each combining two or three unidentified commodity or category signs followed by a numeral — quantities such as '3', '2 plus 1', or '1 large unit plus several smaller units' recorded in the distinctive number system of proto-Elamite scribes. Some entries are damaged or broken off entirely, so their contents and counts are lost. The tablet closes with what looks like a final summary line combining two of the same signs seen earlier, likely a running or grand total of everything listed above. What exactly is being counted — grain, animals, workers, or something else — cannot be determined, since the sign values remain undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: M157 Line 2: M124 M338 M009 M288 — 3(N01) [...] Line 3: M320~f M320# — 2(N39B) 1(N24) Line 4: M218 M175 — 2(N01) Line 5: M387~ee [...] — [...] Line 6: M124 M009 M139 M295~a — 2(N39B) 1(N24) Line 7: [...] — [...] 1(N45) 6(N14) 1(N24) Line 8 (total?): |M218+M288|# M288 — 1(N45) 3(N14)
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
M157 , M124 M338 M009 M288 , 3(N01) [...] M320~f M320# , 2(N39B) 1(N24) M218 M175 , 2(N01) M387~ee [...] , [...] M124 M009 M139 M295~a , 2(N39B) 1(N24) [...] , [...] 1(N45)# 6(N14) 1(N24) |M218+M288|# M288 , 1(N45) 3(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 210. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008010) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
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.