Position in chronology
MDP 06, 212
About this tablet
This is a small clay tablet in the undeciphered proto-Elamite script, found at Susa in southwestern Iran and now in the Louvre (Sb 15083). Proto-Elamite writing, used briefly around 3100–2900 BCE, has never been phonetically deciphered — we can identify individual signs and read the accompanying numerals, but we cannot translate the words themselves into any known language. The tablet is laid out as a series of short entries, each a small cluster of signs followed by a quantity recorded in circular and semicircular number-impressions, which is the hallmark of an administrative accounting record — most likely a tally of commodities, rations, or goods moving through some institution at Susa. The surviving fragments (the main face plus edge pieces and a smaller broken piece below, one of which carries the modern excavation number '212') show it was broken and later reassembled by excavators.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a bookkeeping record, but written in a script no one today can actually read as language — only its numbers make sense to us. At the top is a single sign that seems to serve as a heading or label for the whole document. Below it come a series of short lines, each pairing a small group of unread signs with a number: one line totals 2 large units plus 2 small units, another 9 small units, another roughly 18, another 16, and another 65. The final line ends with just a sign and no visible number, perhaps because that part of the tablet is broken or the entry was left incomplete. In short, it looks like a tally of separate lots of some goods or commodities, kept by an accountant at Susa around five thousand years ago, whose actual subject matter is now lost to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading, isolated at top:) M157~a [Entry 1] M343 M388 M004 |M218+M101|(?) M371 M346 — quantity: 2(N14) 2(N01) [Entry 2] M139(?) M004 |M218+M101|(?) M371 — quantity: 9(N01) [Entry 3] M352~c M346 — quantity: 1(N14) 8(N01)(?) [Entry 4] M057~a1 M346 — quantity: 1(N14) 6(N01) [Entry 5] M346 — quantity: 6(N14) 5(N01) [Entry 6, final, quantity broken/absent:] M139
Our translation engine — Sonnet 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
M157~a , M343 M388 M004 |M218+M101|? M371 M346 , 2(N14) 2(N01) M139# M004 |M218+M101?|# M371 , 9(N01) M352~c M346 , 1(N14) 8(N01)# M057~a1 M346 , 1(N14) 6(N01) M346 , 6(N14) 5(N01) M139 ,
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 212. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008012) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.