Position in chronology
MDP 17, 335
About this tablet
A badly broken proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, in south-western Iran, written around 3000 BCE. Proto-Elamite is a still-undeciphered script, so only the numbers can be read with confidence: each line pairs a cluster of signs — probably goods, people, or institutions — with a quantity in one of the script's several counting systems. It is a fragment of everyday bookkeeping from one of the earliest literate societies outside Mesopotamia, surviving today in six joined pieces in the Louvre.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What is left is a list of entries, each with a tally attached. One entry counts a single fractional unit; another, headed by one sign, counts one unit in a different system; a third entry is lost. A group of three signs is counted at two units. Then two entries whose counts are broken, a single item counted once in yet another system, a longer entry of five signs with its number gone, two illegible signs counted at two fractional units, and a final damaged entry with an uncertain whole number. Everything else has broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , [...] 1 (N39B — a fraction unit) M379 , 1 (N24) M050k? , [...] M175+M136 M266b M263 , 2 (N1) M124 M377 [...] , [...] [...] , 1 (N30C) M124 M024 M242b? M096 M288 , [...] (two illegible signs) , 2 (N39B) [...] M288? , n (N1)? (Remainder lost in the break; the reverse as photographed bears no legible signs beyond museum numbers.)
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
[...] , [...] 1(N39B)# M379 , 1(N24) M050~k#? , [...] |M175+M136|# M266~b M263 , 2(N01) M124 M377 [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N30C) M124 M024 M242~b#? M096 M288 , [...] x x , 2(N39B) [...] M288#? , n(N01)#?
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 335. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008533) — 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.