Position in chronology
MDP 17, 248
About this tablet
A broken accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little after 3100 BCE in the Proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. What can be read with confidence are the numbers: impressed circles and wedges recording quantities beside each entry, of the kind used for measured commodities such as grain or other rationed goods. The signs naming the commodities, people or institutions remain unreadable, so the tablet gives us the shape of a ledger without its vocabulary. It is one of thousands of such records from the Susa administration, evidence of a fully bureaucratic economy whose language we still cannot hear.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger sheet, and only the figures survive intact. The first entries record 3 units, then 5 units, then two more of 3 units each, set against commodity or account labels that are now unreadable. Further down the amounts shift to a larger measure: several entries of 1 plus 5 (in the higher unit), one of 1 plus 3, and near the end another of 1 plus 5. Several lines are broken away entirely, and the categories being counted are written in a script no one can yet read. The back of the tablet carries no writing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobverse […] …, 3 (N01) M146 … M101(?), 5 (N01) M207, M057(?) […], […] […] M228~d, M329, M101, 3 (N01) M259(?), M219(?), M101(?), 3 (N01) […], 1 (N23) 5 (N14) M146, M371, M367(?), 1 (N23) 5 (N14) M301, M218, M329(?) …, 1 (N01)(?) […] […], 1 (N23) … M390, M218(?), M367(?), 1 (N23) 5 (N14) … […] M371(?), 1 (N23) 3 (N14) […] … M097~h(?), M218, M367(?), 1 (N23) 3 (N14) M308~e […], […] […] M367, 1 (N14) M057, |M218+X|, M367, 1 (N23) 5 (N14) (reverse uninscribed / not preserved)
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
[...] x , 3(N01) M146 x M101# , 5(N01) M207 M057# [...] , [...] [...] M228~d M329 M101 , 3(N01) M259# M219# M101# , 3(N01) [...] , 1(N23) 5(N14) M146 M371 M367#? , 1(N23) 5(N14) M301 M218 M329#? x , 1(N01)# [...] [...] , 1(N23) x M390 M218#? M367# , 1(N23) 5(N14) x [...] M371#? , 1(N23) 3(N14) [...] x M097~h# M218 M367# , 1(N23) 3(N14) M308~e [...] , [...] [...] M367 , 1(N14) M057 |M218+X| M367 , 1(N23)# 5(N14)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 248. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008446) — 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.