Position in chronology
MDP 17, 157
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little over five thousand years ago in the proto-Elamite script — a system still largely undeciphered. What survives is a ledger: a column of sign-groups on the left naming people, institutions or commodities, each followed on the right by impressed numerals from a capacity (grain-measure) system, and a summary figure at the bottom. We can read the arithmetic but not yet the words, which is typical of this earliest Iranian bureaucratic archive. The tablet is broken into several fragments and much of its surface is chipped away.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger, and only the numbers really speak. Entry after entry pairs a group of signs — a name, a department, or a type of goods — with a measured quantity: two units, then a broken line, then two more, then one, and so on down the column, with smaller sub-units added in several places. Toward the bottom a single line carries what looks like the running total: three large measures plus two smaller denominations. The rest of the surface is broken or worn smooth, so several entries and the sign-groups that identified them are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) M387 M124 M009 M338~b M066~a M288 — 2(N39B) M124[?] [...] — [...] [...] M288[?] — 2(N39B) M066 M246~b M066 M288 — 1(N39B) M124[?] [...] — [...] [...] (x) M288 — 2(N39B), 2(N30C) M124 M371 M009[?] M371[?] (x) [...] — [...] [...] M288[?] — 1(N39B), 1(N24) M304 M001 M288 — 2(N30C) [...] M243~j[?] — 1(N39B), 1(N24) M288 — 1(N30C) [...] — 3(N39B), 1(N24), 2(N30C) (apparent total) (Remaining surfaces: broken and effaced; no further legible entries.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
M387 M124 M009 M338~b M066~a M288 , 2(N39B) M124# [...] , [...] [...] M288# , 2(N39B) M066 M246~b M066 M288 , 1(N39B) M124# [...] , [...] [...] x M288 , 2(N39B) 2(N30C) M124 M371 M009# M371# x [...] , [...] [...] M288# , 1(N39B) 1(N24) M304 M001 M288 , 2(N30C) [...] M243~j#? , 1(N39B) 1(N24) M288 , 1(N30C) [...] , 3(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 157. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008355) — 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.