Position in chronology
MDP 06, 247
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite numerical/administrative tablet from Susa, likely dating to the late fourth millennium BCE (the 'Uruk period' horizon in which the proto-Elamite writing tradition of southwestern Iran emerged). It records a short list of entries — each pairing a string of undeciphered signs with a proto-Elamite numeral notation (large circular impressions for higher units, small dots for ones) — the kind of tally kept by an early accountant tracking goods, labor, or rations. The specific signs (M157, M195, M218, M288, M001, M057) remain undeciphered; proto-Elamite script is still only partially readable by modern scholars, so this tablet is best understood as a bookkeeping record whose exact subject (grain? livestock? labor units?) cannot yet be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This broken clay tablet is a simple tally sheet. At the top is a single sign that may serve as a heading or category label for the whole record. Below it, the first entry lists a string of symbols followed by a quantity: one large unit, one middle unit, and four small units. A second, damaged entry follows with a different quantity — two middle units and two small units — but the rest of that line, and whatever object or person it refers to, is broken away. A third entry survives only as a number, six small units, with everything else lost. In short, this is an accounting record — someone kept a count of something (goods, rations, or labor) in three or more lines — but because the proto-Elamite script itself has not yet been deciphered, we can read the numbers with confidence but not the words that explain what was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineHeading: M157 Entry 1: |M195+M057|(?) |M218+M288| M001 M288 — 1(N34) 1(N45) 4(N14) Entry 2: [...] M195~d M288 — 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] Entry 3: [...] — [...] 6(N14)
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 , |M195+M057|? |M218+M288| M001 M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45) 4(N14)# [...] M195~d M288 , 2(N45) 2(N14) [...] [...] , [...] 6(N14)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 247. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008044) — 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.