Position in chronology
MDP 17, 239
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 commodity or account designation with a numerical notation — the round and wedge-shaped impressions still clearly visible on the surface — so this is a ledger of quantities disbursed or received, not a piece of connected prose. Because Proto-Elamite word signs remain unread, we can follow the arithmetic but not name the goods or the people involved. It is one of thousands of such tablets from the Susa acropolis that document 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 short accounts list, badly broken. The first surviving entry, whose heading is lost, is credited with 40 units; the next, marked with the recurring M288 sign, with 20. A third entry combining several commodity signs is set at 12; a fourth, again fragmentary, at 2 units plus 2 measures of a different (probably capacity) system. A fifth entry totals 21, and a sixth records 1 unit and one further measure before the text breaks off. The last line is lost entirely, and the reverse preserves nothing readable.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] — 4(N14) 2. [...] M288 — 2(N14) 3. M356 ... M036, M312 ... — 1(N14) 2(N1) 4. [...] ... M288 — 2(N1) 2(N30C) 5. M217, M124, M288 — 2(N14) 1(N1) 6. M288 — 1(N1) 1(N29B) [...] 7. [...] — [...] (The remainder of the obverse is broken away; the reverse, so far as it is preserved, carries no legible signs.) (Modern museum inventory painted on the edge: Sb 6373)
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
[...] , 4(N14) x M288 , 2(N14) M356# x M036# M312# x , 1(N14)# 2(N01)# [...] x M288# , 2(N01) 2(N30C) M217# M124 M288# , 2(N14) 1(N01) M288# , 1(N01)# 1(N29B)# [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 239. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008437) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.