Position in chronology
MDP 17, 281
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script around 3100–2900 BCE. Each line pairs a cluster of signs — probably a person, household, or commodity designation — with the number 1, and the final line totals them as 6. Although we cannot read the words, the arithmetic is transparent: an official was tallying six single units of something, one entry at a time. It is a snapshot of the earliest bureaucracy on the Iranian plateau, where writing existed almost entirely to keep count.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Six separate entries, each credited with a single unit, followed by a total of six. Every line names its item or holder with a short cluster of signs whose meaning is lost to us, and the opening line is broken away. The reverse of the tablet was left blank apart from a couple of stray impressions. What survives is essentially a receipt or checklist: six things, counted one by one, and summed at the bottom.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] ... , M001 M259 M218[?] M278~e — 1(N01) M195~m M220 M218 ... [...] — 1(N01) M152 M097~h[?] M387 M387 M377 M295[?] M096[?] M066 — 1(N01) |M296+M296|[?] M263~1 ... M096 [...] — 1(N01) M066~a M057 — 1(N01) M263~1[?] ... [...] M066~a — 1(N01) [...] — 6(N01) (Reverse: uninscribed except for a few impressed marks at the lower right; no readable text.)
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
[...] x , M001 M259 M218# M278~e , 1(N01) M195~m M220 M218 x [...] , 1(N01) M152 M097~h# M387 M387 M377 M295# M096#? M066 , 1(N01) |M296+M296|# M263~1 x M096 [...] , 1(N01) M066~a M057 , 1(N01) M263~1#? x [...] M066~a , 1(N01) [...] , 6(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 281. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008479) — 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.