Position in chronology
MDP 17, 075
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been fully deciphered. It is a bookkeeping record: a list of entries, each pairing a sign (probably a commodity, person, or institution) with a counted quantity. Because the proto-Elamite signs cannot yet be read, we can recover the numbers but not what was being counted — a tantalizing glimpse of one of the world's earliest, and still locked, accounting systems.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a running tally, most of whose labels we can no longer read. The opening entry is broken away. Then: something, 4 units; the item written M193, 4 units; an illegible item, 11; the item M136~k, 10; the item M210~g, 1; a lost item, 4; the item M348, 1; the item M325, 3; another lost item, 3; and a final broken entry counting at least 70 (one sixty plus one ten), with the rest of the figure lost. What exactly was being counted — grain, animals, workers, rations — is hidden behind the undeciphered signs.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-Elamite account; beginning broken) [entry lost] , [sign lost] — 4 (N01 units) M193 — 4 (N01 units) (illegible sign) — 1 (N14, ten) 1 (N01 unit), i.e. 11 M136~k — 1 (N14, ten) M210~g — 1 (N01 unit) [sign lost] — 4 (N01 units) M348 — 1 (N01 unit) M325 — 3 (N01 units) [sign lost] — 3 (N01 units, damaged) [sign lost] (illegible) — 1 (N34, sixty) 1 (N14, ten) [remainder of numeral 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
[...] , [...] , 4(N01) M193 , 4(N01) x , 1(N14) 1(N01) M136~k , 1(N14) M210~g , 1(N01) [...] , 4(N01) M348 , 1(N01) M325 , 3(N01) [...] , 3(N01)# [...] x , 1(N34) 1(N14) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 075. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008273) — 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.