Position in chronology
MDP 17, 161
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script. It is a ledger: a column of commodity or category signs, each followed by a number impressed with a round stylus — 5, 7, 2, 16, 6, 1, 40, 2. We can read the arithmetic perfectly but not the words, because Proto-Elamite writing has never been cracked; the signs M367, M346, M006 and M269 are catalogue labels modern scholars use, not translations. Tablets like this one, excavated at Susa and now in the Louvre, are among the oldest bookkeeping documents on earth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of a ledger. The first lines are broken, then the entries run: 5 of something, 7 of a second item, 2 more, 16 of another, 6, 1, 40 of a commodity whose sign is worn away, and 2 of a final item before the tablet breaks off. What each commodity actually was, we cannot say — the script is undeciphered — but the totals themselves are unambiguous, tallied in ones and tens with a round stylus. The head of the account, which would have named the responsible official or institution, is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] — [...] — 5 (units) M367 — 7 (units) [...] — 2 (units) M367~c — 1 (ten) 6 (units) = 16 M346~a2 — 6 (units) M006 — 1 (unit) (illegible sign) — 4 (tens) = 40 M269~a2 — 2 (units) [...] (The remainder is broken away; the head of the account and its opening entries are lost.)
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
[...] , [...] , 5(N01) M367 , 7(N01) [...] , 2(N01) M367~c , 1(N14) 6(N01) M346~a2 , 6(N01) M006 , 1(N01) x , 4(N14) M269~a2 , 2(N01)# [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 161. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008359) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.