Position in chronology
MDP 17, 099
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 deciphered. It is a bookkeeping record: a list of entries, each pairing one or more commodity or category signs with a precise quantity, likely ending in a summary count. We can read the numbers with confidence, but not what was being counted — grain, animals, workers, or goods. Tablets like this are among the earliest accounting documents in the world, from a writing system parallel to, but independent of, Mesopotamian cuneiform.
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 lines of entries. Each line names something — we can no longer tell what, since the script is undeciphered — and records how much of it: one unit of the first item, four each of the next two, then a partly broken entry of a smaller measure, then possibly two units, two single-unit entries, one more unit, a fractional amount, an entry whose quantity is lost, and finally what looks like a closing tally of five units plus two fractions. The top of the tablet is broken away and several signs mid-text are too damaged to identify.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-Elamite account; the non-numerical signs are undeciphered, so each entry is rendered as its sign designation plus its exact numerical notation.) [...] M038~e M057 M263~a — 1(N01) [1 unit] M002 (M036 combined with 1(N24)) — 4(N01) [4 units] (illegible sign) (M036 combined with 1(N24)) — 4(N01) [4 units] M288 — 1(N24)? [...] [1 lesser unit(?); rest broken] [...] — 2(N01)? [2 units(?)] (illegible sign) — 1(N01) [1 unit] (illegible sign) — 1(N01) [1 unit] M263~a — 1(N01) [1 unit] (M036 combined with an unidentified sign) — 1(N30D) [1 fractional unit] (M036 combined with 1(N24)) — [...] [quantity lost] M288(?) — 5(N01) 2(N30C) [5 units and 2 fractional units — possibly a summary line]
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
[...] M038~e# M057 M263~a , 1(N01) M002 |M036+1(N24)| , 4(N01) x |M036+1(N24)| , 4(N01) M288 , 1(N24)#? [...] [...] , 2(N01)? x , 1(N01) x , 1(N01) M263~a , 1(N01) |M036+X|# , 1(N30D) |M036+1(N24)| , [...] M288#? , 5(N01) 2(N30C)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 099. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008297) — 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.