Position in chronology
MDP 17, 088
About this tablet
An accounting 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 are the numbers: a series of entries recording quantities of some commodity, probably grain, tallied under headings we can no longer understand. Tablets like this show that the world's earliest writing was invented for bookkeeping, not literature, and this one preserves the arithmetic of an institution whose very language is lost to us.
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 title line at the top and at least three itemized entries below it. Each entry names something — a person, a product, or an office, we can no longer tell which — followed by a quantity. One entry records thirty-four units in mixed measures, another records two units plus four smaller fractional measures, and a third records two units plus two fractional measures. The right edge of the document is broken off, so parts of every line are missing, and the back of the tablet is blank. The words themselves are written in a script no one today can read; only the numbers survive as meaningful information.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading:) M157~a — [undeciphered rubric sign] (Entry 1) |M195+M057~a4| M324~c M056~f M206~d [...] , [amount lost] (Entry 2) [...] M288 : 3(N14) 4(N39B) — thirty (units) and four (fractional grain-measure units) (Entry 3) |M167~a+M131~k| M056~f [...] , [amount lost] (Entry 4) [...] : 2(N01) 4(N39B) — two (units) and four (fractional units) (Entry 5) M005~a M206~d [...] , [amount lost] (Entry 6) [...] : [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B) — [...] two (units) and two (fractional units) (The non-numerical signs are proto-Elamite and remain undeciphered; only the numerals can be read with assurance. The right side of the tablet is broken away, and the reverse is uninscribed.)
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
M157~a , |M195+M057~a4| M324~c M056~f M206~d# [...] , [...] [...] M288 , 3(N14) 4(N39B) |M167~a+M131~k| M056~f# [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01)# 4(N39B) M005~a M206~d# [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 2(N01) 2(N39B)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 088. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008286) — 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.