Position in chronology
MDP 17, 168
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. What survives is clearly an account: groups of signs naming people, goods or institutions, each followed by a small numerical notation (the single-unit sign N01). Three such entries of "1" are still legible; the rest of the tablet has flaked away. It is a scrap of the earliest bureaucracy of Iran, readable as a ledger in form even though nobody can yet read its words.
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. Each surviving line pairs a label — a name, a commodity, or an office, written in signs we cannot yet read — with an amount. Three entries are recorded as one unit each; the amounts for the other lines are broken away, as are the opening and closing lines. The edges and the back of the tablet preserve nothing legible; the white numbers visible on the reverse are modern museum inventory marks, not ancient writing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1. [...] , 2. ... M338[#] [...] , [...] 3. M322~g[#] M388[#] M317[#?] M024 [...] , [...] 4. [...] M219[#?] , 1(N01) 5. M371 M128~dc[#] , 1(N01) 6. M124[#?] [...] , [...] 7. [...] , 1(N01) 8. [...] , [...] (Rendered as an account:) [entry lost] [...], sign M338 [...] — quantity lost M322~g, M388, M317(?), M024 [...] — quantity lost [...] M219(?) — 1 (unit N01) M371, M128~dc — 1 (unit N01) M124(?) [...] — quantity lost [...] — 1 (unit N01) [...] — [quantity lost] (The remaining surfaces — edges and reverse — carry no legible signs; the reverse bears only modern museum markings.)
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 M338# [...] , [...] M322~g# M388# M317#? M024 [...] , [...] [...] M219#? , 1(N01)# M371 M128~dc# , 1(N01)# M124#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 168. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008366) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.