Position in chronology
MDP 17, 468
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in Proto-Elamite around 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's oldest writing systems, and one that has never been deciphered. The scribe ruled the surface into cases, wrote a short sign-group naming a commodity or an account-holder in each, and then punched the quantity beside it: small dots for single units, round circular impressions for tens, and larger circles for the next order up. The entries are individually unreadable, but the structure is unmistakably a ledger, with what looks like a running or summed figure of 2 large circles and 6 tens partway down. The reverse is blank and worn, and the tablet is broken away at the left, so the beginning of most entries is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken page from an accountant's ledger, and we can read the numbers but not the words. Entry after entry pairs a short group of signs — a product, a person, or a department — with a figure: one unit, one unit again, three units, then ten, then ten. One line carries a much larger figure, two of the big circular marks plus six tens, which looks like a subtotal. Several entries have lost their quantities in the break, and the left edge of nearly every line is gone. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, ruled cases; Proto-Elamite signs, largely without established readings) [...] — 1 (N01) M124 M386~a M263[?] M048[?] M096[?] M288[?] — 1 (N01)[?] [...] M049~d M240~e M038~i M096 M288 — 3 (N01)[?] [...] M384~d[?] M001 M288 — 1 (N14) M251~c M009 M371 M288 — 1 (N14) [...] M288[?] — [quantity lost] [...] — 2 (N45) 6 (N14) M391 — [quantity lost] [...] — 2 (N01) M004 M263~1 [...] — [quantity lost] (reverse: uninscribed / effaced apart from modern museum markings)
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
[...] , 1(N01) M124 M386~a M263# M048#? M096# M288# , 1(N01)# [...] M049~d M240~e M038~i M096 M288 , 3(N01)# [...] M384~d# M001 M288 , 1(N14) M251~c M009 M371 M288 , 1(N14) [...] M288# , [...] [...] , 2(N45) 6(N14) M391 , [...] [...] , 2(N01) M004 M263~1 [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 468. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008666) — 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.