Position in chronology
MDP 17, 243
About this tablet
A broken clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. What can be read is its arithmetic: each line names one or two signs (a person, an institution, or a commodity) followed by impressed numerals from the grain-capacity and discrete-counting systems, with a larger summation near the end. The tablet belongs to the earliest bureaucratic paperwork of the Iranian plateau, the Susa counterpart of the archaic accounts of Uruk. Its reverse is blank, and the front is chipped away on the left, so roughly half the entries are lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, and only the right-hand column of it survives. Entry after entry pairs a name or commodity label with a measured amount: two units of grain in the first surviving line, then a series of smaller allotments — one unit here, one and a fraction there, two of the smaller measure elsewhere. Near the bottom the figures grow larger, as if a running or final total is being struck: two large grain units plus several fractional measures. Everything to the left of these numbers, including the words that would tell us who received what, is either broken off or written in a script no one can read. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) […] … — 2(N39B) M386 M263 — […] […] … M066 — […] […] M263~a(?) |M036+1(N30D)|(?) — […] […] — 1(N24)(?) 1(N30C)(?) M263 — 1(N01) 1(N24) M175 M136~c — 1(N39B) … … M380 |M218+M288| M263 — 1(N01) M248~a M259 M036 — 1(N24) 2(N30C@b) |M036+1(N30D)|(?) — n 1(N39B) 1(N30C) […] — 2(N39B) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39B@b) […] (reverse: uncorrected — no signs preserved; modern museum markings only)
Our translation engine — Opus 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
[...] x , 2(N39B) M386 M263 , [...] [...] x M066 , [...] [...] M263~a# |M036+1(N30D)|# , [...] [...] , 1(N24)# 1(N30C)# M263 , 1(N01) 1(N24) M175 M136~c , 1(N39B) x x M380 |M218+M288| M263 , 1(N01) M248~a M259 M036 , 1(N24) 2(N30C@b) |M036+1(N30D)|#? , n 1(N39B) 1(N30C) [...] , 2(N39B) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) 1(N39B@b) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 243. 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 (P008441) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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