Position in chronology
MDP 06, 211
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, in what is today southwestern Iran, dating to the Uruk period (roughly the late 4th millennium BCE). The proto-Elamite script is one of the world's oldest writing systems and remains largely undeciphered — scholars can identify individual signs and numerals but cannot yet read connected sentences. What survives here is a short list of sign-plus-quantity entries, almost certainly a record of counted goods (grain, animals, or other commodities) kept by an early bureaucrat, with a final numeral that may be a running total.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a tally sheet. It opens with a heading sign whose meaning we cannot recover, then lists five entries, each pairing an unreadable commodity or category sign with a small quantity — amounts of 4, 1, 2, 1, and 9 units, each counted in a specific proto-Elamite numeral system. The tablet ends with a single mark that looks like a summary figure, perhaps a total for the whole list. Because the proto-Elamite script has not been deciphered beyond its numerals and sign inventory, we can report the accounting structure and the numbers with confidence, but not what was actually being counted or for whom.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [Sign] M157 (Line 2) [Sign compound] M157+X / M036+1(N14) — 4(N1@b) [numeral: 4 in the N1@b counting system] (Line 3) [Sign compound] M260+1(N14) — 1(N01@b) [numeral: 1 in the N01@b counting system] (Line 4) [Sign compound] M157+M131, [sign] M370(damaged/uncertain), [unreadable sign] — 2(N1@b) [numeral: 2 in the N1@b system] (Line 5) [Sign compound] M351+1(N14) — 1(N01@b) [numeral: 1 in the N01@b system] (Line 6) [Sign compound] M036+1(N14) — 9(N1@b) [numeral: 9 in the N1@b system] (Line 7) 1(N34) [single unit in the N34 counting system — likely a subtotal or terminal notation]
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# , |M157+X|# |M036+1(N14)| , 4(N1@b)# |M260+1(N14)| , 1(N01@b)# |M157+M131| M370#? x , 2(N1@b) |M351+1(N14)| , 1(N01@b) |M036+1(N14)| , 9(N1@b) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 211. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008011) — 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.