Position in chronology
MDP 17, 221
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script. It is an accounting document: each line pairs a sign or group of signs — the item, the person, or the office being accounted for — with a small number recorded in punched circular numerals. Because proto-Elamite has never been read, we can follow the arithmetic but not the words: seven or eight short entries, most of them of a single small unit each. It is one of thousands of such records from the earliest bureaucracy of the Iranian plateau, preserved in the Louvre.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger page, and most of what survives is the column of figures. The first line, which probably named the account or the responsible party, is damaged and its total is lost. After that come short entries: one unit against one sign group, then a larger measure plus a smaller one against another, then a run of single small units — one, two, one, one, one — set beside signs we cannot yet pronounce. Both edges are broken, so some entries and probably a closing total are missing. What we can say is that a scribe at Susa was tallying small, standardized quantities of something, item by item.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. M124 M380~b M329(?) M102~da(?) [ ... ] — [quantity lost] 2. [ ... ] M263 — 1(N01) 3. M387~ef M036 — 1(N39B) 1(N30C@b) [ ... ] 4. M002 — 1(N30C) 5. M370 M288 — 2(N30C) 6. [ ... ] — 1(N30C) 7. M002 — 1(N30C) 8. [ ... ] — 1(N30C) (The signs M124, M380~b, M329, M102~da, M263, M387~ef, M036, M002, M370 and M288 are undeciphered proto-Elamite sign-forms; no phonetic or semantic reading can be given. The numerals belong to the proto-Elamite capacity system: N01, N39B, N30C and its variant N30C@b. Several lines are broken away at the left and right; further entries are lost.)
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
M124# M380~b M329#? M102~da#? x [...] , [...] [...] M263 , 1(N01) M387~ef M036 , 1(N39B) 1(N30C@b)# [...] M002 , 1(N30C) M370 M288 , 2(N30C) [...] , 1(N30C) M002 , 1(N30C) [...] , 1(N30C)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 221. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008419) — 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.