Position in chronology
MDP 17, 252
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the Proto-Elamite script — a writing system that remains largely undeciphered. Its numbers we can read perfectly well: entries of 2, 1, and 5 units, plus a mixed measure combining signs from two different counting systems. What was being counted is lost to us, because the accompanying commodity or personal-name signs (M124, M298, M379, M218, M036) have no established meaning. The tablet is a reminder that in the earliest phase of writing, arithmetic outlived language: we can still follow the bookkeeping without knowing what the goods were.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger. The opening line is broken away. The next entry lists a set of three signs — a commodity or an account holder — against a quantity of 2. A third entry, also damaged, records what looks like one unit plus two further measures drawn from different numerical systems. Then a single unit is booked against one sign group, and five units against another. Beyond the numbers, none of the words can be read: the script is Proto-Elamite and still undeciphered, so the goods and the people behind these totals stay anonymous.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Line 1) [...] — (Line 2) [...] M124, M298~a, M379~d : 2(N01) (Line 3) [...] : [...] 1(N01)(?), 1(N39B), 1(N24) (Line 4) M218~g : 1(N01) (Line 5) M379~d, |M036+M343~e|(?), M218~g : 5(N01) (No further inscribed text is preserved; the surviving reverse and edges carry only impressed numerical strokes and modern museum markings.)
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 M298~a M379~d , 2(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01)# 1(N39B) 1(N24) M218~g , 1(N01) M379~d |M036+M343~e|? M218~g , 5(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 252. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008450) — 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.