Position in chronology
MDP 17, 466
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written about 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script. It is a simple ledger: a column of entries, each pairing a sign — a commodity, an institution, or a person — with a quantity, written with large circular punches (units of ten) and small oblong impressions (single units). Because proto-Elamite words cannot yet be read, we can follow the arithmetic perfectly while the goods themselves remain anonymous. Tablets like this one are among the earliest bookkeeping documents from Iran, made by administrators who borrowed the idea of writing from Mesopotamia and then went their own way with it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short list of accounts. The first entry, whose heading is broken off, is credited with 17 units. The next, marked with a compound sign, gets 10. A damaged entry follows with 6 units. Then one heading receives 15, another 10, a fourth (broken) 2, and the last 3. The signs naming what was counted — grain, livestock, or the people responsible — belong to the proto-Elamite script and cannot yet be read, and several of them have flaked away entirely. Nothing survives on the back of the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse […] — 1(N14) 7(N01) (= 17 units) |M136+M195~d| — 1(N14) (= 10 units) […] — 6(N01) M383~c — 1(N14) 5(N01) (= 15 units) M054~b — 1(N14) (= 10 units) […] — 2(N01) M365 — 3(N01) (The left portion of the tablet, where the commodity/beneficiary signs stood, is broken away in several lines; no reverse text is preserved.)
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
[...] , 1(N14)# 7(N01) |M136+M195~d|# , 1(N14)# [...] , 6(N01) M383~c , 1(N14) 5(N01) M054~b , 1(N14) [...] , 2(N01) M365 , 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 466. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008664) — 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.