Position in chronology
MDP 06, 252
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite clay tablet from Susa (modern Shush, in southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly the late fourth millennium BCE — one of the very earliest writing systems in the world, alongside proto-cuneiform in Mesopotamia. It is an administrative or economic ledger: rows of impressed numerical signs paired with incised commodity or category markers, almost certainly recording quantities of goods (grain, livestock, or another commodity) allocated, received, or totaled by some institution or official. Proto-Elamite script has never been fully deciphered, so while the numerical values and general ledger structure are legible, the actual commodities and the meaning of the recurring sign M288 remain unknown. The tablet is broken into several pieces (obverse, edges, and a largely blank reverse), and bears modern museum registration marks ('Sb 15101' and a red '2.2') added long after antiquity.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an ancient bookkeeping tablet, not a letter or a story — think of it as a scrap of an inventory sheet. At the top is some kind of heading or document-type marker. Below it, several lines each pair a recurring sign (perhaps a category label or a commodity marker) with a number: one line records a single unit of a compound item; another lists several different quantities — 2, 1, 1, then a gap where the surface is damaged, then 5, 2, and 1 more of various units; further lines repeat similar short entries, some of them again broken by damage. The tablet ends with what looks like a summary or total line, but it is too damaged to read fully — only a couple of numbers ('2' and '2 more') survive. Because the script used here (proto-Elamite) has never been fully deciphered, we can transcribe the numbers and repeated signs faithfully, but we cannot say for certain what goods or transactions this record actually describes.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineHeading: sign M157. Entry: compound sign |M106~2+M288| — quantity: 1 (N02-unit) [sign damaged, marked with #] Entry: sign M288 — quantities: 2 (N34), 1 (N45), 1 (N14), [break in surface], 5 (N01), 2 (N39B), 1 (N24) Entry: compound sign |M106+X| [damaged, marked with #] — quantity: 1 (N08-unit) Entry: sign M288 — quantities: 1 (N34, uncertain reading), 9 (N14), 1 (N01) Entry: compound sign |M106~2+M288| — quantity: 1 (N02-unit) Entry: sign M288 — quantities: 1 (N45), 4 (N14) Final/totaling line (heavily damaged): [broken], sign M288-related notation, 2 (N34) [marked with #], [break], 2 (N01), 2 (N39B), [break]
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
[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-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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.