Position in chronology
MDP 06, 317
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the same broad horizon as the earliest Sumerian archaic texts from Uruk (late 4th millennium BCE). Proto-Elamite is a writing system used in southwestern Iran that shares the same numerical notation system as early Mesopotamian accounting tablets but whose word-signs have never been deciphered, so we can read the quantities with confidence while the commodities, people, or institutions behind them remain unknown. The tablet appears to be a short list or ledger: a heading sign followed by six entries, each pairing a group of undeciphered signs with a counted quantity — evidence of the sophisticated bureaucratic bookkeeping practiced at Susa in this early period, even though its exact subject cannot yet be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a bookkeeping tablet written in proto-Elamite, an ancient script from Susa (in what is now southwestern Iran) that scholars still cannot read as words — though we can read its numbers perfectly well. At the top is a heading sign whose meaning is unknown. Below it come six entries: each one names some item, person, or category using signs we cannot translate, followed by a tally. The counts recorded are 9 and 8 (in two different unit-signs), then 5 and 1, then 9 alone, then a broken entry restorable as roughly 3 and 4, then 2, and finally a larger total of 2, 9, and 3 in three different counting units. In short: it's a list of six numbered entries under a heading, almost certainly some kind of inventory or account — but what exactly was being counted is lost to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [heading sign] M157 , Line 2: M005~a M257~d M348 M346 , 9(N14) 8(N01) Line 3: M263~1 M295~da (x) , 5(N14) 1(N01) Line 4: |M218+M320|# (x) M001 , 9(N14) Line 5: M009#? [...] , [3(N14) 4(N01)] Line 6: M136~a#? M005~a , 2(N14) Line 7: M346 , 2(N23) 9(N14) 3(N01)
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 , M005~a M257~d M348 M346 , 9(N14) 8(N01) M263~1 M295~da x , 5(N14) 1(N01) |M218+M320|# x M001 , 9(N14) M009#? [...] , [3(N14) 4(N01)] M136~a#? M005~a , 2(N14) M346 , 2(N23) 9(N14) 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 317. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008106) — 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.