Position in chronology
MDP 17, 140
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. What can be read with certainty are the numbers: a series of entries counting goods or personnel in a decimal system, with quantities of 1, 2, 10, and 11 units. The signs naming what was counted — and for whom — remain unreadable, but the tablet's shape and layout show it is bookkeeping: the everyday accounting of one of the world's earliest literate bureaucracies, and one that used writing independently of Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, though most of the item names can no longer be understood. It lists at least eight entries: something tallied at 1 unit, another item at 10, another at 2. Then comes a longer entry — a string of eight signs, perhaps a person's title or a compound commodity designation — credited with 11 units, followed by two more entries of 11 units each. A final entry beginning with another sign is broken off, its quantity lost, and the last line is gone entirely. We can read the arithmetic of this ancient accountant perfectly; what he was counting, we still cannot say.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, fragmentary account; entries separated as SIGN(S) , QUANTITY) [...] M032(?) — [...] 1 unit (1 N01) ... M314 M032(?) — 10 units (1 N14) [...] [...] — 2 units (2 N01) M147~e M218 M386~a M223 M139 M388 M066 M066 — 11 units (1 N14 + 1 N01) [...] ... M218 — 11 units (1 N14 + 1 N01) M145 M066 M314 — 11 units (1 N14 + 1 N01) M263 [...] — [quantity lost] [...] — [quantity lost] (remainder broken)
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
[...] M032#? , [...] 1(N01)# x M314# M032#? , 1(N14)# [...] [...] , 2(N01)# M147~e M218 M386~a M223 M139 M388 M066 M066 , 1(N14) 1(N01) [...] x M218 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M145 M066 M314 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M263 [...] , [...] [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 140. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008338) — 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.