Position in chronology
MDP 17, 147
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet in proto-Elamite, the still-undeciphered script used at Susa in southwestern Iran around 3100–2900 BCE. Because the writing system has never been cracked, we can read the numbers but not the words: the tablet lists about a dozen entries, each pairing one or a few signs — probably commodities, people, or institutions — with a quantity. It is bookkeeping from one of the world's earliest literate societies, whose language remains locked away. Documents like this are the raw material scholars use in the ongoing effort to decipher proto-Elamite.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with about eleven line-items, each recording a quantity against an entry we can no longer name. Two entries are counted at 2 units each and several at 1 unit; one is measured at a single large capacity measure of grain or the like, and two more at a small fractional measure each. One item, twice repeated, is measured by volume rather than counted, suggesting a foodstuff. Several entries are broken away, one entry carries no surviving number, and the end of the list is lost. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse — a proto-Elamite account; the non-numerical signs are undeciphered and are given by their sign numbers) [...] M325 M263b1 — 2 (N1 units) (two illegible signs) [...] — [number lost] [...] — 2 (N1 units) M263b1 M388 M297 — 1 (N39B, a capacity/grain measure) M117 M263b1 — 1 (N1 unit) [...] M131e M263a — 1 (N1 unit) M297 — 1 (N24, a fractional measure) M301 M263a(?) — [no numeral preserved] [...] — 1 (N1 unit) M297 — 1 (N24, a fractional measure) M263a(?) — [number lost] (remainder broken; the reverse is uninscribed)
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
[...] M325 M263~b1# , 2(N01)# x x [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01)# M263~b1 M388 M297 , 1(N39B) M117# M263~b1 , 1(N01) [...] M131~e# M263~a , 1(N01) M297 , 1(N24) M301 M263~a#? , [...] , 1(N01)# M297# , 1(N24) M263~a#? , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 147. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008345) — 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.