MDP 17, 080

~3000 BCE·Uruk Period·P008278

About this tablet

A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dated to the late Uruk period, roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities of undeciphered commodity categories under a series of sign-groups that likely represent goods, rations, or livestock — the everyday bookkeeping of a complex early urban economy. The reverse is largely blank or too damaged to read. Proto-Elamite remains undeciphered as a writing system, so this tablet can be read structurally — as a list of entries with numerical totals — but its specific content (what goods, whose accounts) cannot be rendered into meaningful words. It is nonetheless a vivid document of one of the world's earliest bureaucratic traditions, running parallel to early Sumerian record-keeping in Mesopotamia.

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

Written in modern English

This tablet lists a series of commodity entries, each paired with a quantity. Several category signs appear more than once — including what seem to be two entries under the same classifier (M320 M243~j), one counted as 1 unit and one as 2. Individual line entries record quantities of 1, 2, or 3 units of various categories, and the tablet closes with a grand total of one larger numerical unit (N34). The specific goods, people, or institutions involved cannot be named, because the writing system has not been deciphered — but the accounting structure is clear: a columnar list leading to a summary total, the same logic as any modern ledger.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

Obverse: [M305+M342] [heading/classifier sign-group], M320 M243~j , 1(N39B@c) M024 M033[?] M376[?] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 3(N01) M124 M146 M218 M263~b1 , 1(N01) M131~g [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N01) M320 M243~j , 2(N30C@c) M032 M376[?] [...] , [...] M305 M263~b1 , 1(N01)[?] M382[?] M263~a[?] , 1(N01)[?] [...] M263~b1 , 1(N01) Total: 1(N34)

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

Transliteration

|M305+M342|# ,
M320 M243~j , 1(N39B@c)
M024 M033# M376#? [...] , [...]
[...] , [...] 3(N01)
M124 M146 M218 M263~b1 , 1(N01)
M131~g [...] , [...]
[...] , [...] 2(N01)
M320 M243~j , 2(N30C@c)
M032 M376#? [...] , [...]
M305 M263~b1 , 1(N01)#
M382#? M263~a# , 1(N01)#?
[...] M263~b1 , 1(N01)
1(N34)

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 080. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008278) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).

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