Position in chronology
MDP 06, 290
About this tablet
This is a proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa in ancient Elam (southwestern Iran), dating to roughly the same horizon as the Uruk period in Mesopotamia — the era when writing was first being used for bookkeeping. Proto-Elamite is one of the least understood early scripts in the world: scholars can read its numeral signs (giving quantities and measures) but the word-signs themselves, cited here as catalogue numbers like M057 or M377, remain undeciphered. What survives is a dense list of entries, each a short string of these unread signs paired with a numeral, followed by two summary lines on the reverse with larger totals — the shape of an inventory or tally sheet whose actual subject (grain, animals, land, labor?) cannot yet be recovered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is a tally sheet. Down the front, one entry after another pairs a short cluster of symbols — whose meaning nobody today can read — with a number: one here, two there, some marked as uncertain or broken away entirely. Several lines are too damaged to make out at all. The list breaks off, and the back of the tablet carries what look like closing totals: one larger figure followed by three units in one line, then three units again in the final line, as if the whole set of entries was being summed up. We can see clearly that someone was counting and recording quantities of something in an organized way, but because the proto-Elamite writing system itself has never been deciphered, we cannot say what commodity, animal, or measure was actually being tracked.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: 1. M325, 2. |M157+M377~e+M377~e| M388 M057~b1(#) M387 M218 — 1(N02) 3. M057~a M372~m M371(#?) — 2(N01)(#) 4. M377(#?) x M371 — 1(N01) 5. M057 M352~n M004 M218 — 1(N01) 6. M109 M096(#?) M057 — 2(N02) 7. [...] — 1(N01)(#) 8. M388 M096(#?) M329(#?) — 1(N01) 9. x x M371 x — 1(N01) 10. x [...] — 1(N01)(#) 11. [...] x — 1(N01)(#) 12. M029~c(?) M387~ef M066 — 1(N01) [...] Reverse: 13. x M291 — 1(N14) 3(N01) 14. M072 — 3(N01)
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
M325 , |M157+M377~e+M377~e| M388 M057~b1# M387 M218 , 1(N02) M057~a M372~m M371#? , 2(N01)# M377#? x M371 , 1(N01) M057 M352~n M004 M218 , 1(N01) M109 M096#? M057 , 2(N02) [...] , 1(N01)# M388 M096#? M329#? , 1(N01) x x M371 x , 1(N01) x [...] , 1(N01)# [...] x , 1(N01)# M029~c? M387~ef M066 , 1(N01) [...] x M291 , 1(N14) 3(N01) M072 , 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 290. 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 (P008082) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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