Position in chronology
MDP 06, 271
About this tablet
This small clay fragment from Susa, in modern Iran, is written in the proto-Elamite script — one of the world's oldest writing systems, used around 3100–2900 BCE, and still largely undeciphered by modern scholars. What survives is a short list of numbered entries: each line pairs one or more still-unreadable signs with a quantity, in the format typical of early administrative bookkeeping (goods, rations, or labor counted against a person, place, or commodity category). Because proto-Elamite signs have not been phonetically decoded, we can see the accounting structure clearly but cannot say what was actually being counted. It is part of the large corpus of proto-Elamite tablets published in the early 20th century as Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse (MDP), excavated at Susa alongside the Louvre's other Elamite holdings.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an ancient accounting tablet from Susa, roughly 5,000 years old, written in a script that scholars today still cannot fully read. What survives looks like a simple tally sheet: line after line pairs a cluster of unidentified signs with a number. One entry counts a single unit next to a sign labeled M096; another lists three signs together with a count of four (in a grain-related measure); a further line records 'one plus three' units beside a sign called M220, and another 'one plus one' beside signs M281 and M096 again. Several lines are broken away entirely, and one line seems to be a heading rather than a counted item. Because the proto-Elamite writing system itself remains undeciphered, we can reconstruct the bookkeeping pattern — quantities being tallied against categories — but not what commodity, animal, or service was actually being recorded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1. [...] , [broken — no numeral or sign preserved] 2. [...] M096(#) , 1(N01) 3. M251~c M009 M371 , 4(N39B) 4. M218(#) [...] , [...] [heading or classifier, no numeral] 5. [...] M220 , 1(N01) 3(N39B) 6. M044~a M029~b M057~a , 3(N01)(#) [...] 7. [...] x M281~a(#) M096 , 1(N01) 1(N24) 8. M057 M230~a M387(#?) [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] , [...] M096# , 1(N01) M251~c M009 M371 , 4(N39B) M218# [...] , [...] [...] M220 , 1(N01) 3(N39B) M044~a M029~b M057~a , 3(N01)# [...] [...] x M281~a# M096 , 1(N01) 1(N24) M057 M230~a M387#? [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 271. 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 (P008064) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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