Position in chronology
MDP 17, 228
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in Proto-Elamite — a script that is still largely undeciphered, so we can read its numbers but not its words. The scribe listed three or four commodity entries, each marked by a sign for the thing counted and followed by numerals impressed with a round-ended stylus, then added them up into a single grand total on the last line. Even without knowing what was being counted, the structure is unmistakable: this is bookkeeping, one of the oldest surviving forms of it, from the same generation of accountants who invented writing in Mesopotamia and Iran. The tablet is now in the Louvre (Sb 22395), still bearing its old excavation number 228 in ink.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A short ledger. Under a heading sign that is chipped and unreadable, the scribe enters three items: the first commodity, qualified by two further signs and a container-mark carrying its own figure, is booked at two measures; the second, a related commodity with the same qualifier, at one measure; the third at one measure of a smaller unit. A fourth line collects the running amounts — one of each of the four units used — and the last line closes the account with a single large unit as the grand total. The back of the tablet is blank apart from a few worn traces.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. M305[#?] — (heading sign, no numeral) 2. M387, M124, M081, |M036+1(N39C)| : 1(N24) 1(N30C@b) 3. M387~eg, M036 : 1(N39B) 4. M062 : 1(N30D) 5. M288 : 1(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N30D) 1(N30C@b) 6. (total:) 1(N34) Reverse: uninscribed/effaced apart from faint traces at the upper edge; no readable signs. (Rendered in commodity terms: a heading sign M305, damaged; then three entries — the first of a commodity written M387 with the classifiers M124 and M081 plus a M036-sign bearing an inset numeral 1(N39C), reckoned at 1(N24) and 1(N30C@b); the second of M387~eg with M036, reckoned at 1(N39B); the third of M062, reckoned at 1(N30D). The fourth line, headed by M288, gathers the amounts 1(N39B), 1(N24), 1(N30D) and 1(N30C@b), and the final line gives the grand total, 1(N34).)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
M305#? , M387 M124 M081 |M036+1(N39C)| , 1(N24) 1(N30C@b) M387~eg M036 , 1(N39B) M062 , 1(N30D) M288 , 1(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N30D) 1(N30C@b) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 228. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008426) — 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.