Position in chronology
MDP 17, 229
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little after 3100 BCE in proto-Elamite — a script invented in Iran alongside the earliest Mesopotamian writing and still not deciphered. What can be read are the numbers: quantities of 50, 20, 3, 70 and 3 recorded against different commodity or personal signs, one of which (M288) recurs on nearly every line and probably marks the category being counted. It is an ordinary ledger entry from an administration that kept records of goods, not a literary or royal text, and it survives because clay does.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short list of amounts. The first entry, whose opening is broken away, is credited with 50 units; the next, also damaged, with 20. Then come 3 units against one commodity sign, 70 against another, and a final 3. A single sign appears in almost every line, so the whole list probably tracks one class of goods broken down by owner, supplier, or subtype. The numbers are perfectly clear; the words for what is being counted are written in a script no one can yet read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] |M106~2+M288| M256~b M041~d M288 — 5(N14) [= 50] 2. [...] — 2(N14) [= 20] 3. M038~e M295~e M288 — 3(N01) [= 3] 4. M288 — 7(N14) [= 70] 5. M295~ee M288 — 3(N01) [= 3] (The signs themselves are proto-Elamite and remain undeciphered; only the numerals can be read with confidence. N14 is the large round impression of the decimal-type system, N01 the small round/wedge unit. Line 1 and line 2 each begin in a break.)
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
[...] |M106~2+M288|# M256~b M041~d M288 , 5(N14) [...] , 2(N14)# M038~e M295~e M288 , 3(N01) M288 , 7(N14) M295~ee M288 , 3(N01)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 229. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008427) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.