Position in chronology
MDP 06, 276
About this tablet
This is a small clay account tablet in the undeciphered proto-Elamite script, made at Susa in what is today southwestern Iran, roughly contemporary with the late Uruk period in Mesopotamia (late 4th millennium BCE). It is a bureaucratic record — a ruled list of sign-groups (likely commodities, or possibly names of people or places) each paired with a numeral notation, the kind of everyday bookkeeping that early accountants used to track grain, animals, or labor obligations. Because proto-Elamite writing has never been fully deciphered, we can transcribe the individual signs and their attached quantities with reasonable confidence but cannot yet say in plain language what was actually being counted or who was involved. Its interest lies precisely in that mystery: it is a rare physical trace of one of the first writing systems in the world, still only partly understood by modern scholars.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a ledger page from a very early accounting system that we still can't fully read. At the top is some kind of heading or label. Below it runs a list of entries — each one a small cluster of two or three signs (probably naming a commodity, a person, or a place) followed by a number, much like a modern inventory line: 'item — quantity 2,' 'item — quantity 1,' and so on. Several entries are followed by a second, smaller number attached with a different counting system, suggesting a secondary unit of measure. Much of the tablet is broken, so a number of lines are missing their signs, their quantities, or both, and the text breaks off before the final entries can be recovered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading:) M157~a 1. x M004 M218 M376 — 2(N01) 2. |M228~b+M101| |M228~b+M320| [...] — [...] 3. [...] M285~c — 2(N01) 4. M386~a M380 M371 — 2(N01) 1(N08A) 5. M219 M295~l M218 — 1(N01)# 6. x |M296+M296|#? M371 — 3(N01) 7. M251~i M371 — 1(N08A) 8. M381 — 1(N01)# 9. [...] M226~c#? M032 M218~b — 4(N01) 10. M387 x? [...] — [...] 11. [...] M352~o# — 1(N01) [...] 12. M218# [...] — [...] 13. [...] — [...] 4(N01)# 14. M381 — 4(N01) 1(N08A)
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
M157~a , x M004 M218 M376 , 2(N01) |M228~b+M101| |M228~b+M320| [...] , [...] [...] M285~c , 2(N01) M386~a M380 M371 , 2(N01) 1(N08A) M219 M295~l M218 , 1(N01)# x |M296+M296|#? M371 , 3(N01) M251~i M371 , 1(N08A) M381 , 1(N01)# [...] M226~c#? M032 M218~b , 4(N01) M387 x? [...] , [...] [...] M352~o# , 1(N01) [...] M218# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 4(N01)# M381 , 4(N01) 1(N08A)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 276. 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 (P008069) — 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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