MDP 17, 438

~3000 BCE·Uruk Period·P008636

About this tablet

A small proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dated to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's earliest writing systems, still undeciphered. The tablet records quantities of commodities or goods under what appear to be category signs, with numerical notations in the right-hand column. Tablets like this one were produced by administrators managing the flow of goods — livestock, grain, or manufactured items — through large institutional households. Because proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered, we can read the numbers but not the names of the things being counted.

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. The numbers we can read include amounts like '2 large units,' '1 small unit,' '2 large plus 1 medium unit,' and '2 small units.' The commodity signs that tell us what is being counted are still undeciphered — we know something is being tallied, in varying amounts across at least ten entries, but the nature of those goods remains unknown. Several lines are too broken to read at all.

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

Translation — our engine

Our engine

Low confidence

[...], 2(N39B) M096 M099 [...], [...] [...] x M218, 1(N01) M240 M329 [...], [...] [...] x M057, 2(N39B) 1(N24) [...] x M066, 1(N39B) M146 M066 M096 [...], [...] [...] M387~ef M066, 2(N39B) 1(N24) M004, [...] M243, 2(N01) [...]

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

Transliteration

[...] , 2(N39B)
M096 M099 [...] , [...]
[...] x M218 , 1(N01)
M240 M329 [...] , [...]
[...] x M057 , 2(N39B) 1(N24)
[...] x M066 , 1(N39B)
M146 M066 M096 [...] , [...]
[...] M387~ef# M066# , 2(N39B) 1(N24)
M004 , [...]
M243 , 2(N01) [...]

Scholarly note

Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 438. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).

Attribution

Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008636) — 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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