Position in chronology
MDP 17, 145
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative account from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been deciphered. It is a bookkeeping list: each line pairs a cluster of signs — probably naming a commodity, person, or institution — with a tallied quantity (mostly twos and threes, one entry of fourteen). Tablets like this are among the world's oldest writing, created purely for accounting, and they show a sophisticated numerical system even though we still cannot read what was being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a running ledger with about eleven entries, most of them damaged. Each line names something — a product, a person, or an office, written in signs we can no longer read — and records how many were delivered or owed: two of one item, fourteen of another, two more, two more, three, and so on, with several counts lost in the breaks. The final surviving entry logs two units against a three-sign label. In modern terms it reads like a warehouse tally sheet: item, quantity; item, quantity — the everyday arithmetic of an ancient administration, with the item names now illegible to us.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (fragmentary account, entries of the form 'sign group , numeral'): [...] — 2 units (2 N01) [...] (sign M175) — 14 units (1 N14, 4 N01) (sign M124) [...] — [count lost] [...] (sign M003, variant b) — 2 units (2 N01) (signs M080b, M320, M066a) — 2 units (2 N01) (sign M248c) [...] — [count lost] [...] — 2 units (2 N01) (signs M136g, M041) — 3 units (3 N01) (signs M124, M218, M332) [...] — [count lost] [...] — 2 units (2 N01) (signs M153, M145, M371) — 2 units (2 N01) Note: the sign groups are proto-Elamite and remain undeciphered; only the numerical notations can be read with confidence. Each line records a category or recipient (the sign cluster) followed by a counted quantity.
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
[...] , 2(N01)# [...] M175 , 1(N14) 4(N01) M124 [...] , [...] [...] M003~b , 2(N01) M080~b M320 M066~a , 2(N01) M248~c [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01) M136~g M041 , 3(N01) M124 M218 M332# [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01) M153 M145 M371 , 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 145. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008343) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.