Position in chronology
MDP 06, 326
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period, roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities of commodities or allocations — each line pairing one or more sign-groups with a numeral — in the same bureaucratic format used across hundreds of such tablets from this site. Proto-Elamite script remains largely undeciphered, so the specific commodities and recipients cannot be identified with certainty. This tablet is a small piece of the earliest administrative record-keeping in the ancient Near East, predating the full development of either Sumerian or Elamite writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists a series of commodities or goods alongside quantities, mostly ones and twos. Each entry pairs an unidentified item — designated by signs we cannot yet fully read — with a count: one unit here, two there, one of a different category. Several entries are too damaged or broken to recover. The overall sense is a tally or allocation record, though exactly what was being counted and who was involved cannot be determined from the signs alone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineLine 1: [x] M131, 1(N01) Line 2: [x], 1(N01) Line 3: M305, 2(N01) Line 4: M329 M376, 1(N08A) Line 5: [x], 1(N01) Line 6: [x], 1(N01) Line 7: M180(?), n [quantity unclear] Line 8: [...], 1(N01)(?) Line 9: M003~b M175(?) M032, 1(N01) Line 10: M096~d [x] M376, [...] Line 11: [x] [x] M131, [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
x M131# , 1(N01)# x , 1(N01)# M305# , 2(N01)# M329# M376# , 1(N08A)# x , 1(N01)# x , 1(N01)# M180#? , n [...] , 1(N01)#? M003~b# M175#? M032# , 1(N01) M096~d x M376# , [...] x x M131# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 326. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008115) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.