Position in chronology
MDP 06, 305
About this tablet
This small clay tablet from Susa, in what is now southwestern Iran, is written in the proto-Elamite script — one of the world's earliest writing systems, used around 3100–2900 BCE, and still largely undeciphered today. Unlike contemporary Sumerian cuneiform, no one can yet read proto-Elamite signs as words; scholars can only identify recurring sign-shapes (labeled with 'M' numbers) and the numeral notations that accompany them. What survives here looks like a short administrative account: a heading sign, several entries pairing an unidentified commodity or category sign with a counted quantity, and what may be a closing total. It is a fragment of ancient bookkeeping whose subject — grain, livestock, labor, or something else entirely — remains unknown.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a small accounting tablet, broken into several pieces, written in the proto-Elamite script that nobody has yet learned to read. At the top is a single sign that may serve as a heading or label. Below it, a badly broken line pairs that same sign with another mark, followed by a line that opens with what looks like a section marker and two more unidentified signs, then breaks off. The next lines are clearer only in their numbers: one entry counts 4 units of one kind and 1 (damaged) of another; the next counts 1, 1, and 2 units under a third, uncertain sign; another surviving fragment shows just 1 unit before the text breaks again. The tablet ends with a line giving 3 units, which may be a summary or total. Because the proto-Elamite writing system itself is not deciphered, we can report the sign-shapes and the quantities faithfully, but not what commodity or transaction they actually record.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (Heading, isolated sign at top of tablet): M157 [...] M157+M288 (compound sign) , [...] M328~b (section-opening sign) — M103~1 — M286 (damaged, reading uncertain) , [...] [...] , [...] — quantity: 4 (N39B)-units, 1 (N30C)-unit (damaged) M219 (sign uncertain) , quantity: 1 (N39B)-unit, 1 (N24)-unit, 2 (N30C)-units (damaged) [...] (illegible sign) , quantity: 1 (N39B)-unit (damaged) [...] [...] , quantity: 3 (N39B)-units [likely a summary/total entry]
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
M157# , [...] |M157+M288| , [...] M328~b M103~1 M286#? , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N39B) 1(N30C)# M219#? , 1(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C)# [...] x , 1(N39B)# [...] [...] , 3(N39B)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 305. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008094) — 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.