Position in chronology
MDP 17, 090
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in one of the world's earliest — and still undeciphered — writing systems. The scribe recorded a series of commodities or categories, each marked by a sign we cannot yet read, followed by quantities in a numerical system we can read quite well: round punches for tens, wedges for units, and fractional signs likely for grain measures. It is bookkeeping from the very dawn of writing — the numbers survive, but what was being counted remains 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 about eleven line-items. The top of the first entry is broken away, but the rest reads like a stock list: one category gets 40 units; another gets two large units and ten; a damaged item is counted in small fractional measures; another category gets 46; then 4 fractions of something; then 3 units and a fraction; a compound heading gets two large units and forty; another entry five large units; then 3 fractions; and finally one large unit and twenty. We can no longer tell whether the goods were grain, animals, textiles, or workers — the commodity signs are undeciphered — but the arithmetic of the account is perfectly clear. The back of the tablet is uninscribed apart from the impressions of an official's seal.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse — an account in entries of "sign heading : quantity") [...] (compound sign M195+M057) : [quantity broken] M206~f : 4(N14) M206~fa : 2(N34) 1(N14) (unidentified sign) : 1(N39B) 1(N24) M252~qa : 4(N14) 6(N01) M206~f : 4(N39B) M039~b : 3(N01) 1(N39B) M005~a(?) (compound sign M195+M057) M206~f : 2(N34) 4(N14) M206~fa : 5(N34) (unidentified sign) : 3(N39B) M252~qa : 1(N34) 2(N14) (The sign entries are proto-Elamite and undeciphered; only the numerical notations can be read with assurance. N01 is the basic unit, N14 the ten-unit, N34 the next higher unit of the counting system used; N39B and N24 are fractional capacity units. The reverse carries no further text entries, but bears seal impressions.)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] |M195+M057| , M206~f# , 4(N14) M206~fa , 2(N34) 1(N14) x , 1(N39B) 1(N24) M252~qa , 4(N14) 6(N01) M206~f , 4(N39B) M039~b# , 3(N01) 1(N39B) M005~a? |M195+M057| M206~f , 2(N34) 4(N14) M206~fa , 5(N34) x , 3(N39B) M252~qa , 1(N34)# 2(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 090. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008288) — 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.