Position in chronology
MDP 17, 303
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little over five thousand years ago in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. What survives is an account: a column of entries, each pairing one or two signs (a commodity, a person, or an institution) with an impressed number. The numbers are legible because proto-Elamite numerals are well understood; the words beside them are not. It is bookkeeping we can count but cannot read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger page, and only the figures still speak. Entry after entry sets a label against a quantity: three units against the sign M263; two-and-a-bit measures against a name now lost; a single unit for M387 with M263; two measures for another heading. The reverse continues the same way — one unit and a fraction for a three-sign entry, then a number gone, then a lone unit, then a final heading whose figure has broken off. Everything else the tablet said is either damaged or written in a script no one has yet learned to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse [...] M263 — 3(N01) M387~ef M036[?] — [...] [...] — 2(N30C) 1(N30C@b) M387 M263 — 1(N01) n(n@b)[?] [...] — 1(N30C)[?] 1(N30C@b) (x) M243~e[?] — 2(N30C) [...] — 1(N01) M263 — 1(N01) [...] — 1(N30C)[?] Reverse M387~ef M048~d M263 — 1(N01) 1(N30C@b) (x) — [...] [...] — n (number lost) (x) (x) (x) — 1(N01)[?] M057~b [...] — [...] (Remainder broken away)
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
[...] M263 , 3(N01) M387~ef M036# , [...] [...] , 2(N30C) 1(N30C@b) M387 M263 , 1(N01) n(n@b)# [...] , 1(N30C)# 1(N30C@b) x M243~e# , 2(N30C) [...] , 1(N01) M263 , 1(N01) [...] , 1(N30C)# M387~ef M048~d M263 , 1(N01) 1(N30C@b) x , [...] [...] , n x x x , 1(N01)#? M057~b [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 303. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008501) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.