Position in chronology
MDP 06, 360
About this tablet
This is one of the earliest administrative records in human history — a proto-Elamite clay tablet from Susa (in modern southwest Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It is a numerical account: a heading or category sign at the top is followed by several lines each pairing one or more commodity or entity signs with small tally numbers, ending with a larger total sign at the bottom. Proto-Elamite script has never been fully deciphered, so the specific commodities or categories being counted remain unknown, but the accounting structure — list of items with quantities, summed at the end — is unmistakable. Tablets like this are the world's earliest bookkeeping, produced by administrators managing the flow of goods through a complex urban institution at Susa.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is an administrative tally. A heading sign at the top marks the document's category or subject (its meaning is not yet known). Below it, each line records a different item or group — identified by signs we cannot yet read — alongside a count: 7 of one thing, 3 of another, 2 of several more, with one line recording 2 units of a larger measure. The tablet closes with a grand total at the bottom. The rest of the signs' meanings are lost to us for now, as proto-Elamite writing remains undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric:] M157 [Line 1:] M038~a, M029~a, M149~a, M388, M387 — 7(N01) [Line 2:] M038~e, M387 — 3(N01) [Line 3:] M500, M145, M387 — 2(N01) [Line 4:] M046~a, M387 — 2(N01) [Line 5:] M136~c, M029~b, M387 — 2(N14) [Line 6:] |M157+M131|, M374~c — 1(N01) [Line 7:] M374~c — 2(N01) [Line 8:] M387 — 4(N01) [Line 9:] M149~a — 5(N01) [Total:] 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157 , M038~a M029~a M149~a M388 M387 , 7(N01) M038~e M387 , 3(N01) M500 M145 M387 , 2(N01) M046~a M387 , 2(N01) M136~c M029~b M387 , 2(N14) |M157+M131| M374~c , 1(N01) M374~c , 2(N01) M387 , 4(N01) M149~a , 5(N01) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 360. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008142) — 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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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.