Position in chronology
MDP 17, 121
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 numbers can be read with confidence (they follow known metrological systems, probably measuring grain), but the signs identifying what was counted and for whom remain unreadable. It records about seven entries of small fractional quantities, apparently summed in a final line — the everyday bookkeeping of one of the world's earliest literate administrations, in a writing system whose words are still 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 roughly seven line-items, each pairing an identifying label with a small measured quantity — mostly fractions of a standard grain measure: three of one fraction here, two of a smaller one there, one and a bit elsewhere. The labels themselves — the names or commodities being tracked — are written in signs no one can read today, and several are broken away besides. The last entry jumps to two whole units plus a fraction, which looks like the grand total of everything above it. In short: someone at Susa tallied up several small allotments, probably of grain, and closed the account with a sum.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineOBVERSE [...] (four undeciphered signs: M386~a, M131, M218, M288) — 3 N39B (grain-measure fractions) [...] (entry heading lost) — 2 N30C (small fractional units) (M219, M371~a — undeciphered commodity/category signs) — 1 N39B, 1 N24 (illegible sign) M288 — 1 N24, 2 N30C [...] (entry heading lost) — 2 N30C (M371, M009, M371 — undeciphered signs) — 1 N39B (illegible sign) — 2 N01 (whole units), 1 N24 (The final line, with the largest quantity in whole units, is most likely the total of the preceding fractional entries.)
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
[...] M386~a M131 M218 M288 , 3(N39B) [...] , 2(N30C) M219 M371~a , 1(N39B) 1(N24) x M288# , 1(N24) 2(N30C) [...] , 2(N30C)# M371 M009 M371 , 1(N39B) x , 2(N01) 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 121. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008319) — 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.