Position in chronology
MDP 06, 272
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran), dating to the late 4th millennium BCE — roughly contemporary with the Uruk period in Mesopotamia. Proto-Elamite writing is one of the world's earliest scripts and remains largely undeciphered: the signs recorded here (labeled with catalogue codes like M218, M262, M009 because their meanings are unknown) most likely name commodities, animals, or institutions being counted, each paired with a numeral notation. The tablet is broken into several fragments, so only isolated entries survive rather than a full connected account. It offers a glimpse of an early bureaucracy tracking goods or rations whose exact content we cannot yet read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary accounting record, broken into pieces, listing a series of numbered entries. Each line names one or more items — using symbols whose meanings are not yet understood by modern scholars — followed by a quantity: some entries count '1', others '2', '3', or larger amounts marked with different numeral signs. For example, one entry records two units of a certain item, another records three units of a different one, and several record single units of various goods or categories. Because the script (proto-Elamite) has never been fully deciphered and the tablet itself is damaged and broken into several pieces, we can reconstruct the structure of the record — a list of counted items — but not what any single item actually was.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/line 1) [...] M049(?) M240(?) M057(a)(?), [commodity marker] : 1(N01) [...] (Line 2) [...], [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) (Line 3) M262 M096, : 2(N01) (Line 4) M032(?) [...], : [...] (Line 5) [...], : 1(N01) (Line 6) M386(a) M131 M263 M218, : 1(N01) (Line 7) M260(?) M218(?), : 1(N39B) [...] (Line 8) [...] M377(e) M347 M371, : 1(N01) (Line 9) M151(e) M057(a4), : 1(N01) (Line 10) M218 M295(da) M218, : 1(N01) (Line 11) M089 M388 M251(c)(?) [...], : [...] (Line 12) [...], : 1(N14) (Line 13) M259 M009 M371, : 3(N01)
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
[...] M049~c#? M240~a#? M057~a# , 1(N01)# [...] [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N24) M262~1 M096 , 2(N01) M032#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M386~a M131 M263 M218 , 1(N01) M260~1#? M218#? , 1(N39B)# [...] [...] M377~e M347 M371 , 1(N01) M151~e M057~a4 , 1(N01) M218 M295~da M218 , 1(N01) M089 M388 M251~c#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N14) M259 M009 M371 , 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 272. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008065) — 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.