Position in chronology
MDP 17, 256
About this tablet
A small Proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, made around 3100–2900 BCE — one of the oldest writing systems on earth, and one still undeciphered. A local administrator recorded a short list of commodities or persons, each entry paired with a numerical impression, and closed with a larger summary figure of thirty-two and ten. We can read the numbers with confidence but not the words: the round and wedge-shaped number impressions belong to a system scholars have cracked, while the accompanying signs remain silent.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger. Each line names something — a commodity, a category, or possibly a person — and gives its quantity: two, then a broken figure, then two more, then one, and further entries of one and three. The same sign (M346) recurs as a paired sub-entry after several of the main items, as if marking a second grade or destination for each commodity. At the end come the larger sums: thirty-two of one item and ten of the M346 category. Several quantities are lost where the tablet is broken, and because Proto-Elamite has never been deciphered, we can read the arithmetic but not the goods being counted.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] ... M388 M057~a M029~b M288 — 2 (N01) 2. M346 — [amount broken] 3. [...] M057(?) — 2 (N01) 4. M346 — 1 (N01) 5. M218 M323~c M066 — [amount broken] 6. [...] — 1 (N01) 7. M009 M073(?) — 3 (N01) 8. M346 — [amount broken] (Larger amounts, probably the totalling section) 9. M288(?) — 3 (N14) 2 (N01) [i.e. three tens and two units] 10. M346 — 1 (N14) [i.e. one ten] (Sign values are conventional catalogue designations; Proto-Elamite remains undeciphered, so the commodity words themselves cannot be put into English.)
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 M388 M057~a M029~b M288 , 2(N01) M346 , [...] [...] M057#? , 2(N01) M346 , 1(N01) M218 M323~c M066 , [...] [...] , 1(N01) M009 M073# , 3(N01) M346 , [...] M288# , 3(N14) 2(N01) M346 , 1(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 256. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008454) — 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.