Position in chronology
MDP 17, 210
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in proto-Elamite script around 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's oldest writing systems, and one that has never been deciphered. What survives is an account: a column of entries, each pairing a small group of signs (naming a commodity, a person, or an institution) with the numeral 1 in the standard counting system. The photograph shows the piece from five angles; the reverse and edges are worn smooth, and only part of one inscribed face still holds legible wedges. It is bookkeeping from a city whose language we still cannot read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, and most of it is gone. What remains is a run of short entries, each naming something with two or three signs and then counting out a single unit of it: one against a sign-group beginning M370, one against a group ending in M242, one against M461 and M371, and one more where the label itself is broken away. Other lines — those with M124, M175, M263 — have lost their numerals entirely. Since proto-Elamite has never been deciphered, we can see the shape of the accounting perfectly well without knowing a single thing that was being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, upper fragment) [...] , [...] M314 M338~b [...] , [...] [...] (traces) , 1(N01) M370 M072 , 1(N01) (traces) [...] , [...] (traces) M242~ab(?) , 1(N01) M461~q M371 , 1(N01)(?) [...] , 1(N01) M124 M115~a M314 [...] , [...] [...] M371(?) , 1(N01)(?) M175 [...] , [...] [...] M263 M218 , [...] [...] , [...] (The remainder of the surface, including the lower fragment, is abraded and carries no legible signs.)
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
[...] , [...] M314# M338~b [...] , [...] [...] x , 1(N01) M370 M072 , 1(N01) x [...] , [...] x M242~ab#? , 1(N01) M461~q M371 , 1(N01)#? [...] , 1(N01) M124# M115~a M314 [...] , [...] [...] M371#? , 1(N01)# M175# [...] , [...] [...] M263 M218 , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 210. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008408) — 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.