Position in chronology
MDP 17, 219
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, made around 3100–2900 BCE — from the very first generation of writing anywhere. It is a list of commodity entries, each consisting of one or more signs naming what is counted followed by impressed numerals, with what looks like a summary line at the end. The proto-Elamite script has never been deciphered, so the numbers are legible but the goods are not: we can see that someone was tallying quantities, but not of what. Tablets like this were the bookkeeping of Susa's early institutions, and this one still carries its excavation number inked on the edge.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The opening line is lost. Then: against one group of commodity signs, four units; against the next, one unit and more that is broken away; against another, one unit plus two small measures. The following entry is too damaged to give a quantity, and the one after it records a single unit of a variant measure. Two more entries follow — two small measures against one sign, and one large unit against another, with the rest broken. The final line looks like a total: one large unit, three units, one intermediate measure, and two small measures. A last sign is illegible, and the reverse is essentially blank apart from a few impressed marks.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. [...] 2. M263(?) M387~ef M066 M288 — 4(N39B) 3. M219 M371~a — 1(N24) [...] 4. [...] (traces) M011 M288 — 1(N39B) 2(N30C) 5. M356 M246~s [...] — [...] 6. [...] — 1(N39B@c) 7. M379 — 2(N30C) 8. M504 — 1(N34)(?) [...] 9. M288 — 1(N01) 3(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C) 10. (one illegible sign) (No further inscribed text is preserved; the reverse carries only impressed numerical marks along the left margin and is otherwise blank or broken.)
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
[...] , M263#? M387~ef M066 M288 , 4(N39B) M219 M371~a , 1(N24) [...] [...] x M011 M288 , 1(N39B) 2(N30C) M356 M246~s [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N39B@c) M379 , 2(N30C) M504 , 1(N34)# [...] M288 , 1(N01) 3(N39B) 1(N24) 2(N30C) x
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 219. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008417) — 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.