Position in chronology
MDP 06, 252
About this tablet
This is an archaic administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE — among the very earliest documents in human history. It records quantities of commodities or goods using the numerical notation system common to both proto-cuneiform (Mesopotamia) and proto-Elamite (Susa) accounting. The repeated pairing of a commodity or category sign with numerical entries strongly suggests a tally or ration ledger — someone tracking amounts against named categories. Its significance lies in how clearly it shows that systematic written accounting was practised at Susa at the very dawn of literacy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a heading or category label whose precise meaning is still unknown. What follows is a series of entries, each pairing a commodity sign with a numerical quantity: one unit of one category, then a larger and more complex quantity — two large units, one medium, one small, five singles, two fractional units, and one further count — then a partial entry of one large measure against another category, then a count of one large and nine small units plus one single, then again one unit of the first category paired with one large and four small quantities. The final line is too damaged to read completely, preserving only two large units, two singles, and two fractional counts before breaking off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric:] M157 |M106~2+M288| : 1(N02) M288 : 2(N34) 1(N45) 1(N14) [...] 5(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) |M106+X|# : 1(N08) M288 : 1(N34)? 9(N14) 1(N01) |M106~2+M288| : 1(N02) M288 : 1(N45) 4(N14) [...] : [...] 2(N34)# [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[x] M157 , |M106~2+M288| , 1(N02)# M288 , 2(N34) 1(N45) 1(N14) [...] 5(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) |M106+X|# , 1(N08) M288 , 1(N34)? 9(N14) 1(N01) |M106~2+M288| , 1(N02) M288 , 1(N45) 4(N14) [...] , [...] 2(N34)# [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 252. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008047) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
Related tablets
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.