Position in chronology
MDP 06, 310
About this tablet
This is a small clay tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern Iran) inscribed in the proto-Elamite script, one of the world's earliest and still largely undeciphered writing systems, dating to roughly the late fourth millennium BCE. It is an administrative record — a tally of commodities or goods, each entry marked by a sign followed by a numeral in the proto-Elamite counting notation (N01, N14). The exact goods being counted (animals, grain, textiles, or something else) cannot be identified because most of the signs remain undeciphered, but the structure — a heading followed by ruled columns of sign-plus-number entries — is unmistakably that of an accounting document, part of the bureaucratic record-keeping of an early Elamite administrative center.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is essentially a numbered inventory list, written in a script we still can't fully read. At the top is a heading sign whose purpose is unclear — maybe a document title or category label. Below it come a series of entries, each pairing an unread commodity sign with a quantity: 8 units of one thing, 1 of another, 6 of a third, then a larger count written as '1 (big unit) plus 8' of a recurring item, followed by more entries of 9, then '3 (big units) plus [lost]', then 2, and a final entry whose quantity is missing entirely. In short, some ancient clerk in Susa was keeping count of goods — we just can't say yet what the goods were.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading sign): M157 M319 M218 M321~fa : 8(N01) [......] : 1(N01) M032 : 6(N01) M376 : 1(N14) 8(N01) [......] : 9(N01) M311(?) M376 : 3(N14) [......] [......] M321~f : 2(N01) [......] M321~ha : [......]
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
M157 , M319 M218 M321~fa , 8(N01) [...] , 1(N01) M032 , 6(N01) M376 , 1(N14) 8(N01)# [...] , 9(N01) M311#? M376 , 3(N14) [...] [...] M321~f , 2(N01) [...] M321~ha , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 310. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008099) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.