Position in chronology
MDP 06, 282
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Susa dating to the Uruk/proto-Elamite period (later 4th millennium BCE), when writing itself was newly invented and used almost exclusively to track goods and quantities. Most of the individual signs — commodity markers like M387, M264, M297, and M243 — remain undeciphered pictographs whose meanings scholars have not yet cracked, though the recurring numeral notations (circles and ovals of different sizes representing different counting systems) show it is a tally of some commodity or commodities. The recurring sign M288 in nearly every line, including what looks like a summary total, suggests it may function as a classifier or the name of the counted item itself, but this remains unproven. It is a fragment of the earliest known accounting bureaucracy on Earth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This broken clay tablet is an inventory or receipt listing quantities of one or more commodities, kept by an administrator at Susa around 3100–2900 BCE. The surviving lines record entries such as 'three units' of one item marked with two unidentified signs, another entry involving a different unidentified sign with its own count, and a final line that appears to total everything up using the recurring sign M288 together with numbers equivalent to roughly one large unit and three of a smaller unit. Because the specific pictographs used for the commodities have never been deciphered, we can see that goods were being counted and tallied here, but we cannot yet say what those goods actually were. Several stretches of the tablet are broken away entirely, so parts of the record are permanently lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column/line 1 — broken) [...] (Line 2) [...] x, M387, M264~a: 3(N01) (Line 3) M297 [...] , [...] (Line 4) [...] , [...] 1(N30C)#? (Line 5) x, M243~j: 1(N39B) 1(N24) [...] (Line 6 — total) M288: 1(N01) 3(N39B)
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 M387 M264~a , 3(N01) M297 [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N30C)#? x M243~j# , 1(N39B) 1(N24) [...] M288 , 1(N01) 3(N39B)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 282. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008075) — 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.