Position in chronology
MDP 17, 087
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — one of the world's earliest writing systems, and one that has never been deciphered. Each line pairs a sign or sign-cluster (perhaps naming a commodity, person, or institution) with a quantity punched into the clay. We can read the numbers but not the words: this is bookkeeping whose arithmetic survives while its subject matter is lost. The large rectilinear design on the reverse may be a seal impression, the ancient equivalent of an official's signature.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with about seven entries, each recording an amount of something we can no longer identify. The first entry logs twenty-two units against a damaged label; the next, three units; a broken line preserves only a small fractional amount. A fourth entry records twenty whole units plus fractions, and the final readable line lists four units and two fractional measures. The recurring sign on nearly every line probably marks the commodity or category being counted, but its meaning is lost. Several entries are broken away entirely, and the back of the tablet carries what looks like an official seal or large sign rather than more text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] M136+M365 (damaged) M288 — 2(N14) 2(N01) [i.e. 2 tens and 2 units] M057~a M288 — 3(N01) [3 units] [...] — [...] 1(N24) [1 fractional unit] M208 M288 — 2(N14) 2(N39B) 1(N24) [2 tens, 2 and 1 fractional units] M288 — [...] [...] — [...] M288 — 4(N01) 1(N39B) 1(N24) [4 units, 1 and 1 fractional units] (Signs M057, M136, M208, M288, M365 are proto-Elamite signs whose meanings remain undeciphered; only the numerical notations can be read with confidence.)
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
[...] |M136+M365|# M288 , 2(N14) 2(N01) M057~a M288 , 3(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N24)# M208 M288 , 2(N14) 2(N39B) 1(N24) M288 , [...] [...] , [...] M288 , 4(N01) 1(N39B) 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 087. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008285) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.