Position in chronology
MDP 06, 264
About this tablet
This is a fragmentary proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to the late 4th millennium BCE — the same era as the earliest Sumerian writing at Uruk, though the proto-Elamite script itself remains largely undeciphered. The surviving text is a list of entries, each pairing an unidentified commodity or category sign with a numeral, most likely tracking quantities of goods (grain, livestock, or labor units) received or disbursed by some institution. Because proto-Elamite sign values are not yet firmly established, scholars can describe its structure — a tally of paired entries — but not confidently translate what was actually being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a set of accounting entries scratched onto a clay tablet, now broken into several pieces. Each line pairs a sign — some kind of commodity marker or category, still not securely identified by modern scholars — with a number: one unit here, two there, some larger amounts marked with different counting symbols. Many of the entries are damaged or missing their front halves, so we can't tell exactly what was being counted or by whom. The final line combines three signs together with a numeral, which may mark a special category or a summary, but this too cannot be confirmed. It reads like a bookkeeping record, but its precise subject remains unknown.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse, fragmentary — multiple broken pieces) [...] M106+M288(?) — [...] [...] — [...] 2(N39B) M391 — 1(N01) M288 — [...] [...] — [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) M391 — 1(N01) M288 — [...] [...] — [...] 1(N01) M288 — 1(N34) 1(N45)(?) [...] M288 — 2(N45)(?) M295~ka M157~a M288 — 1(N34)
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
[...] |M106+M288|# , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) M391 , 1(N01) M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M288 , 1(N34) 1(N45)# [...] M288 , 2(N45)# M295~ka M157~a M288 , 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 264. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008057) — 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.