MDP 06, 270

~3000 BCE·Uruk Period·P008063

About this tablet

A small proto-Elamite clay tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the very earliest writing systems in the world, still largely undeciphered. It records numerical notations alongside pictographic signs that likely refer to commodities or categories of goods, typical of the administrative records kept by early urban institutions at Susa. The surviving signs include what appear to be numerical values using the N14, N24, and N39B numeral signs, combined with commodity ideograms whose exact meaning remains unknown. This tablet is a small piece of the vast proto-Elamite accounting system that once tracked the flow of goods across one of the ancient world's first cities.

Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.

Written in modern English

This tablet is too fragmentary to reconstruct a complete account, but the surviving portions record quantities of goods in a proto-Elamite administrative format. One entry shows a commodity sign paired with the number 1 (N24); another entry records 4 (N14) and 3 (N39B) units of something. The specific goods and the people involved can no longer be identified — much of the tablet is broken away, and the proto-Elamite script itself has not been fully deciphered. What remains is a partial ledger: numbers, categories, and quantities, the bookkeeping of an ancient city.

A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

[...] [...] x M056~f M288 , [...] [...] , [...] [...] M048~c , [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 3(N39B) [...] [...] , [...] [...] x , [...] [...] M220 M099 , 1(N24) [...] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N14) 3(N39B) [...] [...] x , [...]

Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.

Transliteration

[...] ,
[...] x M056~f# M288# , [...]
[...] , [...]
[...] M048~c# , [...]
[...] , [...]
[...] , [...] 3(N39B) [...]
[...] , [...]
[...] x , [...]
[...] M220# M099 , 1(N24) [...]
[...] , [...]
[...] , [...] 4(N14)# 3(N39B) [...]
[...] x , [...]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 270. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008063) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

Related tablets

Related sources

~3200 BCE

Proto-Cuneiform Account Tablet

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.

~3500 BCE

Kish Tablet

Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.

~2450 BCE

Stele of the Vultures

The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.