Position in chronology
MDP 17, 072
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in one of the world's earliest writing systems — before writing could record spoken language. Each line pairs a sign or sign-cluster (still undeciphered, but likely naming a commodity or account category) with a precise quantity in the archaic numerical system: units, tens, and fractions. We cannot say what was being counted, but the bookkeeping structure itself — item, quantity, item, quantity — is unmistakable, and it shows administrators at Susa tracking goods with real arithmetic precision at the very dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with four surviving entries. The first line is lost. The second records five whole units plus a bit more — three larger fractions and one small fraction — of some commodity marked with the signs M266b and M288. The third entry logs eleven units and a fraction of a related category (the same signs, with M036 added); its end is broken. The fourth, under the recurring M288 marker, counts twenty-one units and three fractions. On the back, a final entry under a different sign records two units before the tablet breaks off. What exactly was counted — grain, textiles, animals — the undeciphered signs no longer tell us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: [...] (line broken away) [...] M266~b M288 — 5 (N1) units, 3 (N39B) fractional units, 1 (N30C) small fractional unit [...] ... M036 M266~b M288 — 1 (N14) ten-unit, 1 (N1) unit, 1 (N39B) fractional unit [...] M288 — 2 (N14) ten-units, 1 (N1) unit, 3 (N39B) fractional units Reverse: M010~1 — 2 (N1) units [...] (remainder broken)
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
[...] , [...] M266~b# M288 , 5(N01) 3(N39B) 1(N30C)# [...] x M036 M266~b M288 , 1(N14) 1(N01)# 1(N39B)# [...] M288# , 2(N14) 1(N01) 3(N39B) M010~1 , 2(N01) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 072. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008270) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.