Position in chronology
MDP 17, 167
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the Proto-Elamite script — one of the world's earliest writing systems, and one that has never been deciphered. What survives is an account: a heading sign, then a short list of commodity signs each followed by a number (one N14 unit, two N39B units, one N34 unit). We can read the quantities with confidence because the numeral systems of Proto-Elamite are well understood, but the goods being counted remain nameless. The tablet is a reminder that literate bookkeeping in Iran is as old as it is in Mesopotamia, even though we still cannot pronounce a word of it.
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. It opens with a heading sign, then lists entries: one commodity marked with a compound sign gets 1 unit of the N14 measure; a second entry, with a doubled sign and one more, also gets 1 N14; a third entry of the same commodity as before gets 2 units of the N39B measure. Two further lines are broken away, and the fragment closes with a figure of 1 N34 — probably a subtotal. The names of the goods are written in a script no one can yet read, so only the arithmetic survives. The back of the tablet is blank and worn.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1. M157~a — (heading; no numeral preserved) 2. |M317+M269| M297~d : 1(N14) [...] 3. [...] M262~1 M262~1 M096 : 1(N14) 4. (illegible sign) : [...] 5. M297~d : 2(N39B) 6. (illegible sign) [...] : [...] 7. 1(N34) (No text preserved on the reverse; the surface is blank and eroded.)
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
M157~a , |M317+M269| M297~d , 1(N14) [...] [...] M262~1 M262~1 M096 , 1(N14) x , [...] M297~d , 2(N39B) x [...] , [...] 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 167. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008365) — 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.