Position in chronology
MDP 06, 309
About this tablet
This is a small administrative tablet from Susa written in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script, dating to the Uruk period (late 4th millennium BCE), one of the earliest writing systems in the world alongside archaic Sumerian. The surviving lines pair unread commodity or category signs with numeral notations — likely counts of goods, animals, or rations recorded by an early bureaucrat — but because proto-Elamite signs (other than the numeral system) cannot yet be read phonetically or semantically, the exact transaction remains unknown. It is a piece of the earliest known accounting technology from ancient Iran, valuable precisely because it shows how record-keeping preceded readable language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This looks like an inventory or receipt: each line lists one or more unidentified commodity marks followed by a quantity. The first entry records something totaling 1 plus 2 units (in two different counting systems); the second, a single unit of a different measure; the third pairs two more unread signs with a count of 1, though the line breaks off; the fourth line strings together five unread signs with no legible number surviving; and the last line, mostly lost, ends with a count of 9. Because the commodity signs themselves haven't been deciphered, we can say numbers were recorded but not what was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [...] sign M066, sign M288 — 1(N14) 2(N01) (Line 2) [...] — 1(N45) (Line 3) sign M254~a, sign M372~a, sign M288 — 1(N14) [...] (Line 4) sign M388, sign M066~1, sign M352~n, sign M370, sign M218, sign M288 — [...] (Line 5) [...] — [...] 9(N14)
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
[...] M066# M288 , 1(N14) 2(N01)# [...] , 1(N45) M254~a M372~a M288 , 1(N14)# [...] M388 M066~1 M352~n M370 M218 M288 , [...] [...] , [...] 9(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 309. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008098) — 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.