MDP 17, 096 + 325 + 380

~3000 BCE·Uruk Period·P008294

About this tablet

A small Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the earliest writing systems ever used. The tablet is now broken into three joining fragments and records quantities of different commodity categories, each identified by a compound sign built around the repeated classifier M362, followed by a numerical count using the standard Proto-Elamite numerical notation. Proto-Elamite writing has never been fully deciphered, so we can read the numbers and recognize the sign forms, but we cannot translate the commodity names into known words. This tablet is a typical example of the bureaucratic accounting that drove the invention of writing in ancient Iran, just as similar tablets did in Mesopotamia at the same time.

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

Written in modern English

This is an account list. Each line records a different category of goods — we can see the categories by their sign labels, but we do not yet know what words those labels represent — together with the quantity assigned to each: line 1, 3 units; line 2, 6 units; line 3, 47 units (4 tens and 7 ones); line 4, 40 units; line 5, 10 units; line 6, 10 units plus more that is now broken away; line 7, 5 units; line 8, 3 units; line 9, 33 units; line 10, 21 units. The rest of the tablet is too damaged or broken to read further.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Medium confidence

Line 1: [M362+M005] M207~b , 3 (units N01) Line 2: [M362+M059~d] M312~a , 6 (units N01) Line 3: [M362+M384~a] , 4 (units N14) 7 (units N01) Line 4: [M362+M059] [M001+M379~c] , 4 (units N14) Line 5: [M362+M383~c] , 1 (unit N14) Line 6: [M362+M158] , 1 (unit N14) [...] Line 7: [M362+M026~h] , 5 (units N01) Line 8: M351~c M362 , 3 (units N01) Line 9: [M362+M244?] , 3 (units N14) 3 (units N01) Line 10: [M362+M099~b] , 2 (units N14) 1 (unit N01)

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

Transliteration

|M362+M005|# M207~b , 3(N01)#
|M362+M059~d| M312~a# , 6(N01)#
|M362+M384~a| , 4(N14) 7(N01)
|M362+M059| |M001+M379~c| , 4(N14)
|M362+M383~c| , 1(N14)
|M362+M158|# , 1(N14) [...]
|M362+M026~h| , 5(N01)
M351~c# M362 , 3(N01)
|M362+M244?|# , 3(N14) 3(N01)
|M362+M099~b|# , 2(N14) 1(N01)

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 096 + 325 + 380. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008294) — 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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