Position in chronology
MDP 17, 265
About this tablet
A small Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the earliest writing systems ever used. It records quantities of commodities or categories of goods, each paired with a numerical notation in the Proto-Elamite counting system. The signs themselves remain undeciphered: Proto-Elamite has never been fully read, so we can see the accounting structure clearly but cannot name the goods being counted. This tablet is a vivid reminder that ancient record-keeping preceded readable writing — bureaucracy came first, decipherment has not yet followed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an account of several commodity categories, each assigned a quantity. One item is recorded as 1 unit, another as 2 units, and a partially preserved entry shows a larger amount — 1 large unit plus 5 smaller ones (roughly equivalent to 15 in this numerical system). Several entries are too damaged or broken to read. The names of the commodities themselves cannot be translated, as the Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM057 M252~r , M269~a# , [...] [M106~a] , [...] [M009] , [...] [M206~g] , 1(N01) M102~d , 2(N01) [M309~a] , [...] [...] , 1(N34) 5(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M057 M252~r , M269~a# , [...] [M106~a] , [...] [M009] , [...] [M206~g] , 1(N01) M102~d , 2(N01) [M309~a] , [...] [...] , 1(N34) 5(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 265. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008463) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.