Position in chronology
MDP 06, 312
About this tablet
This is a small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk/proto-Elamite period (later 4th millennium BCE), one of the earliest writing systems used in southwestern Iran. It is a numerical-sign account — a list of undeciphered commodity or institutional signs paired with quantities — the kind of record ancient administrators kept to track goods, rations, or labor. Most of the individual signs (M218, M223, M240, M314, M096, M032, M044) remain undeciphered by modern scholarship, so the tablet's precise subject cannot be recovered, but its structure (sign + numeral, repeated in short entries) is unmistakably an accounting document.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet: a series of short entries, each naming some kind of good, item, or category (using signs we can't yet read) followed by a quantity — one entry of 1, others of roughly 2 or 3 units. The tablet is broken in several places, so many entries are only partly preserved or missing their counted amounts entirely. In short, it's a fragmentary inventory or ration list whose specific subject matter is lost to us, though its accounting format is clear.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] ... M240 , [...] [...] ... M223 M044 , 1(N24) M218 , [...] [...] , 3(N01) M314 ... M096 , 2(N01) M218 M032 , [...] [...] , 2(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
[...] x M240# , [...] [...] x M223# M044 , 1(N24) M218 , [...] [...] , 3(N01) M314# x M096 , 2(N01) M218 M032 , [...] [...] , 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 06, 312. 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 (P008101) — 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.
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