Position in chronology
MDP 06, 369
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dated to the late Uruk period, roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities of commodities or goods — possibly animals, persons, or products — arranged in short entries, each pairing an undeciphered sign-group with a numerical count. Proto-Elamite is the world's most extensive undeciphered writing system, and while the accounting structure of tablets like this one is well understood, the signs naming specific commodities remain unread. This tablet is a typical small ledger of the kind produced by administrators managing surpluses at an early 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 records a series of short inventory entries, each pairing an unreadable category label with a number. The heading sign at the top probably identifies the document type or institution. Then come individual lines: one unit of [unknown commodity], one unit of [unknown sign], another entry too broken to read, one large unit of something, one unit of a different category marker, one more unit, four units of a further category, and a final broken line recording two units plus additional fractional amounts. The commodity names cannot yet be read; only the numbers survive as meaningful.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157 [heading/rubric], |M157+M288| M038~a M001~b M264~b [category marker], 1 (unit) M263~b1 [sign], 1 (unit) M263~b1 [...], [...] [...], 1 (large unit) M038~e M001~b M264~a [category marker], 1 (unit) M263~b1 [sign], 1 (unit) M002 |M036+1(N24)| [sign], 4 (units) [...], [...] 2 (units) 1(N39B) 1(N24)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157# , |M157+M288| M038~a# M001~b M264~b# , 1(N01) M263~b1 , 1(N01) M263~b1# [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N14) M038~e M001~b M264~a , 1(N01) M263~b1 , 1(N01) M002 |M036+1(N24)| , 4(N01) [...] , [...] 2(N01)# 1(N39B) 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 369. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008151) — 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.