Position in chronology
MDP 17, 116
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 remains undeciphered. It records a short list of counted items, each entry pairing a sign or sign-group (probably naming a commodity, animal, or person-category) with a numeral; three entries preserve the count 'one'. We can read the numbers and recognize the bookkeeping format, but the things being counted are still a mystery, which is exactly what makes tablets like this valuable to decipherment efforts.
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 heading followed by a list of entries, each naming something and counting it. The heading names a category we can no longer identify. Then come at least seven entries: several are broken where the number stood, but three of them clearly record 'one' of whatever item their signs designate. Think of it as a page from a warehouse or estate account — 'category X: item A ..., item B: 1, item C ..., item D: 1, item E ..., item F: 1' — where the numerals survive perfectly but the words for the goods are written in a script nobody today can read. The list breaks off at the end, and the back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading:) [The compound sign] M305+M342. M057 (variant i), M106 [...] — [numeral lost] [...] M263 (variant 1), M281 (variant g) — 1 (N01) M388, (illegible sign) [...] — [numeral lost] [...] M004, M218 — 1 (N01) M391, M320 [...] — [numeral lost] [...] M390, M218 — 1 (N01) M315 [...] — [numeral lost] (Remainder broken; reverse uninscribed apart from stray strokes.)
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
|M305+M342| , M057~i M106 [...] , [...] [...] M263~1 M281~g , 1(N01) M388 x [...] , [...] [...] M004 M218 , 1(N01) M391 M320# [...] , [...] [...] M390 M218 , 1(N01) M315 [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 116. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008314) — 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.