Position in chronology
MDP 17, 100
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in proto-Elamite — a script that has never been deciphered. The scribe recorded a series of entries, each pairing one or more classifying signs (probably commodities, goods, or the people/offices responsible for them) with a counted quantity in small units. We can read the numbers but not the words, so we know someone was counting and tracking things here — we just cannot say what. Tablets like this are among the earliest written records from Iran, born purely from the needs of administration.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger with about six line-items. Each line names something — a product, a category, or perhaps a person or department — using signs whose meanings are now lost, and then gives a count: one unit of the first item, two units of the second, one unit of the fourth. The quantities for the third, fifth, and sixth entries are broken away, and one sign in the fifth entry is too damaged to identify at all. In modern terms, it reads like: 'Item A — 1; Item B — 2; Item C — (amount lost); Item D — 1; Items E/F — (amount lost).' The back of the tablet carries no readable text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) (entry 1) M291 (and) M036 — 1 (N30C unit) (entry 2) M387 (and) M036 — 2 (N30C units) (entry 3) M010 — [quantity lost] (entry 4) [...] M010 — 1 (N30C unit) (entry 5) M124, the compound sign M217+M124, M066, (one illegible sign) — [quantity lost] (entry 6) [...] the compound sign M036 with 1 (N30D) — [quantity lost] (The signs are proto-Elamite and remain undeciphered; only the numerals can be read with confidence. The reverse is uninscribed or effaced.)
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
M291 M036 , 1(N30C)# M387# M036 , 2(N30C) M010# , [...] [...] M010# , 1(N30C) M124 |M217+M124| M066# x , [...] [...] |M036+1(N30D)|# , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 100. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008298) — 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.