Position in chronology
MDP 06, 258
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite economic tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk/proto-Elamite period (roughly 3100–2900 BCE), one of the earliest bureaucratic documents in human history. It records a short list of entries — each pairing an unidentified commodity or category sign with a counted quantity — and ends with a summary line totalling one of the recurring sign groups. Because proto-Elamite script remains largely undeciphered, scholars can read the numerals with confidence but cannot yet say what goods, animals, or rations the signs actually denote; the tablet is preserved as physical evidence of an accounting system whose content is still locked behind an unread script.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an ancient accounting slip from Susa, roughly five thousand years old, written in a script — proto-Elamite — that experts still cannot fully read. Line by line it lists small quantities against unidentified categories of goods: 4 of one thing, 1 of another, 5, then 1 (in a different, larger counting unit), 1 more (in yet another unit), 4, 3, and 2. One entry is too broken to make out. The tablet closes with what looks like a summary or total line: 5 units of the item marked by a sign that recurs throughout the record, possibly a running tally or grand total for the whole account. What exactly was being counted — grain, animals, or something else — cannot currently be recovered from the signs themselves.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse, entries recorded as commodity-sign groups followed by numerical notations) 1. [...] M388(#) M057~b(?) M099(#) M371 M288 — 4(N01) [...] 2. [...] , [...] 1(N01) 3. [...] M004 |M218+M101| M371 — 5(N01) 4. M377~e |M106+M288| [...] , [...] 1(N24) 5. M380 M371 — 1(N14) 6. M295~u M220 — 4(N01) 7. M387~c x M387 M218 — 3(N01) 8. M301(#) |M296+M296| M057 — 2(N01) 9. M290(?) [...] , [broken] 10. (Total line) M288(#) — 5(N14)
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
[...] M388# M057~b1 M099# M371 M288 , 4(N01) [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) [...] M004 |M218+M101| M371 , 5(N01) M377~e |M106+M288| [...] , [...] 1(N24) M380 M371 , 1(N14) M295~u M220 , 4(N01) M387~c x M387 M218 , 3(N01) M301 |M296+M296| M057 , 2(N01) M290? [...] , M288# , 5(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 258. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008053) — 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.