Position in chronology
MDP 06, 256
About this tablet
This small clay fragment comes from Susa (in present-day Iran) and belongs to the earliest wave of writing anywhere — the proto-Elamite script used around the late fourth millennium BCE, roughly contemporary with the earliest Sumerian tablets from Uruk. It is an administrative tally: rows of undeciphered signs, each followed by a numeral in one of the proto-Elamite counting systems (N01, N08), most likely recording quantities of some commodity, ration, or livestock allotted to or from named categories of people or goods. Because proto-Elamite script remains largely undeciphered — unlike its Sumerian cousin — we can identify the bookkeeping structure (sign-group, then number) but not what was actually being counted or by whom. The tablet itself is broken into several pieces, further limiting what can be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a scrap of an ancient accounting record from Susa, written in the proto-Elamite script — one of humanity's oldest writing systems, and one we still cannot fully read. Each line follows the same pattern: a cluster of signs (naming some person, place, or commodity we can't identify) followed by a number. The surviving entries record quantities of one unit each, and a couple of two-unit groups, but the tablet is broken at both edges of nearly every line, so most of the context — what exactly was being tallied, and for whom — is lost. Two additional signs at the very end are too damaged even to attempt reading.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [...] , [broken — no legible entry] (Line 2) [...] sign M376 , [1 unit (N08)?] (Line 3) signs M046 M254~b , 1 unit (N01) (Line 4) signs M218 M250~ba [...] , [...] (Line 5) [...] signs M024 M033 M376 , 1 unit (N08) (Line 6) signs M254~b1 M046 [...] , [...] (Line 7) [...] signs M380~b M295~y M263~1 M376 , [1 unit (N08)?] (Line 8) [...] sign M096 , 1 unit (N01)? (Line 9) [two unidentified signs] [...] , [...]
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
[...] , [...] M376# , [1(N08)?] M046 M254~b# , 1(N01) M218 M250~ba [...] , [...] [...] M024# M033#? M376# , 1(N08)# M254~b1 M046# [...] , [...] [...] M380~b M295~y#? M263~1 M376 , [1(N08)?] [...] M096? , 1(N01)? x x [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 256. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008051) — 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.