Position in chronology
MDP 17, 062
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been deciphered. It records quantities of some commodity — grain, livestock, or labor — distributed or received under several headings, each marked by signs whose meanings are lost. Tablets like this are among humanity's earliest bookkeeping, produced by an administrative system parallel to, but independent of, early Mesopotamia; we can read the numbers with confidence even though the words remain a mystery.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with a header line and a running list of entries, each pairing a category label with a quantity. The first entry logs roughly two tens plus a fraction of some unit; the second, a longer compound label, logs six tens and two units (sixty-two); a third logs one ten. Two or three more entries follow at the bottom, but their quantities are broken away and cannot be read. Every entry shares one recurring sign, apparently the classifier for whatever commodity is being counted — but since Proto-Elamite is undeciphered, we know the amounts without knowing what was being tallied.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading) M175+M136 (entry heading; undeciphered sign compound, possibly an institutional title or account heading), M124 (with classifier?) M288 — 2(N14) 1(N24) [= 2 large units and 1 fractional unit], M128 M377 M347 M371 [M288] — 6(N14) 2(N01) [= 6 large units and 2 single units], M195 M288 — 1(N14) [= 1 large unit], M147 M101 M288 — [count lost], M288(?) — [count lost], [sign lost] M288 — [count lost].
Our translation engine — Fable 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
|M175+M136| , M124 M288 , 2(N14) 1(N24) M128~ca M377~e M347 M371# [M288] , 6(N14) 2(N01) M195 M288 , 1(N14) M147~d M101 M288 , [...] M288#? , [...] x M288 , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 062. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008260) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.