Position in chronology
MDP 17, 218
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script around 3100–2900 BCE. Each line pairs a group of commodity or category signs with a numerical notation — the numerals (N01, N39B, N30C, N24) belong to different counting systems used for different kinds of goods, which is one of the few things scholars can read with confidence. The tablet is badly eroded and cracked, and the sign values themselves remain unknown, so what survives is the skeleton of a transaction: several entries, several quantities, and a scribe's tally. It is one of thousands of such records from the earliest bureaucracy of the Iranian plateau.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, and we can read the arithmetic but not the words. Line by line it lists a series of goods — each written with a cluster of signs whose meaning is lost — followed by an amount: one unit here, one unit there, one unit plus two of a smaller measure in the fifth entry, and a single unit of a different measure in the sixth. Two of the entries have lost their numbers to breakage, and two have lost their commodity names. The final line names one more item and then breaks off. The back of the tablet is blank or worn smooth.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] M010~2 — 1 (N01) 2. [...] M099 [...] — [amount broken] 3. [...] — 1 (N39B) 4. M124, M009, M338~b, M010~2 — 1 (N39B) 5. M002 — 1 (N39B), 2 (N30C) 6. [...] M377, M099, M096, M010~2 — 1 (N24) 7. M124, M218, M295, [...] — [amount broken] 8. [...] — 1 (N01) 9. M206~d — [amount broken] (Reverse uninscribed / surface destroyed; edges bear 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
x M010~2# , 1(N01)# x M099# x [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N39B) M124 M009 M338~b#? M010~2 , 1(N39B) M002# , 1(N39B)# 2(N30C)# x M377# M099# M096 M010~2 , 1(N24)# M124#? M218 M295# [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) M206~d# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 218. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008416) — 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.