Position in chronology
MDP 17, 150
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little over five thousand years ago in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. Even so, the layout is unmistakably bookkeeping: line after line pairs a sign (a commodity, a person, or an institution) with a counted amount, and the whole list closes with a single grand total. Three sign-groups recur through the entries, suggesting repeated deliveries or allocations of the same few items. The tablet is broken along its lower edge, so part of the account is lost, but the numerals — punched circles and dots still crisp in the clay — survive better than the words.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger. Each line names something and gives a quantity: one entry of 2 units in the largest measure, several entries of 2 smaller units, one of 1 plus 2 smaller units, two single-unit entries, one entry of 3 large units, and a few whose figures are broken away. Three headings repeat across the list, as if the same commodity or the same account were being tallied again and again. At the bottom the scribe drew everything together into one closing figure: 1(N34). Because proto-Elamite has never been read, we know exactly how much was counted and nothing at all about what it was.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) […] M381 M366 […] , […] M387 M263~b1 M288 , 2(N39B) M036 , […] […] , 2(N30C) M036 , 1(N24) 2(N30C) […] , 1(N01) M036 , 1(N30C) 2(N30C@b) M387~ef M050~m , 2(N30C) M036 , 1(N24) […] […] , 1(N01) M309~d , 3(N14) M387~ef [unread sign] , […] M297 , 2(N30C) […] , […] (Total) 1(N34) Note: the signs of this tablet belong to the proto-Elamite script, which remains undeciphered. The sign names (M-numbers) and numeral notations (N01, N14, N24, N30C, N34, N39B) are conventional modern labels, not readable words. What can be recovered with confidence is the structure: a sequence of headed entries, each consisting of one or more signs followed by a numerical quantity, closed by a single summary figure of 1(N34).
Our translation engine — Opus 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
x M381# M366# [...] , [...] M387 M263~b1 M288 , 2(N39B) M036# , [...] [...] , 2(N30C) M036 , 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...] , 1(N01) M036 , 1(N30C) 2(N30C@b) M387~ef M050~m , 2(N30C) M036 , 1(N24) [...] [...] , 1(N01) M309~d , 3(N14) M387~ef# x , [...] M297 , 2(N30C) [...] , [...] 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 150. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008348) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.