Position in chronology
MDP 17, 343
About this tablet
A small, badly broken accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. Each line pairs a cluster of signs (probably naming a person, institution, or commodity) with a quantity, mostly the single unit '1'. We cannot say what was being counted, but the format shows Susa's administrators keeping ledgers in the same way their contemporaries at Uruk did, using a script of their own.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a ledger of individual entries, each tallied at one unit. The first entry's label is lost; it is counted as 1. The next label (signs M255 and M096) has lost its number. Another lost label: 1. An entry labelled with five signs (M386, M295, M110, M297, M066): 1. An entry labelled with M327, M219, M218: 1. An entry beginning with M248 — its number is gone. A damaged label: 1 in a different counting unit (N24). A label M218: 1. A final entry is too damaged to read. The reverse is blank or worn away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (proto-Elamite account; signs are undeciphered and rendered by their catalogue numbers): [...] , [...] 1 (N01) M255 M096(?) [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1 (N01) M386~a M295~s M110~a M297 M066 , 1 (N01) [...] M327(?) M219 M218 , 1 (N01) M248~f [x] [...] , [...] [x] , 1 (N24) M218 , 1 (N01) [x x] , [...] (The reverse, as photographed, bears no legible writing.)
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.
Engine notes
read from photo5 uncertain terms ↓
- M255, M096, M386~a, M295~s, M110~a, M297, M066, M327, M219, M218, M248~f — Proto-cuneiform/proto-Elamite logograms identified by their numerical codes in the sign list; their precise lexical meanings are not yet established. Administrative function is inferred from parallels and context.
- 1(N01) — The basic unit numeral in the round-impression system; what commodity or measure it quantifies cannot be determined from surviving context.
- 1(N24) — A higher-order numerical sign; its precise value in the metrological hierarchy depends on the counting system being used, which is not recoverable from this fragment alone.
- M218 — Appears in contexts suggesting a subtotal or section-divider function, but this is inferred from parallels, not confirmed independently in this tablet.
- #? (sign uncertainty markers) — The '#' and '?' in the transliteration (M096#?, M327#?) indicate the reading is uncertain even for the original editors; the photograph confirms damaged surfaces at these points but cannot resolve the uncertainty.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the central fragment (the main inscribed piece) shows clearly impressed cuneiform-precursor wedges and round/oval impressions consistent with proto-cuneiform numerical signs (N01-type round impressions are visible). The surface is heavily eroded and the tablet is broken into multiple pieces; several signs on the edges and the smaller flanking fragments are too damaged or obscured to read independently. The bottom fragment and reverse appear largely uninscribed or too weathered to yield sign readings. The sign clusters in the upper-left area of the main face show overlapping complex signs consistent with the multi-element sign groups cited in the transliteration (M386~a, M295~s type clusters), though individual sign identification at this resolution cannot be confirmed with certainty. The transliteration's use of '#' markers (indicating uncertain readings) and 'x' placeholders aligns with the visible damage pattern. No discrepancy between photo and transliteration can be firmly established, but neither can the transliteration be independently verified sign-by-sign from the photograph. This is a proto-cuneiform text from the Susa/Proto-Elamite administrative corpus; comparable tablets are published in MDP 17 and treated in Damerow & Englund's work on proto-Elamite accounting.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 15, 2026 · 1745 in / 876 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , [...] 1(N01)# M255 M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N01) M386~a M295~s M110~a M297 M066 , 1(N01) [...] M327#? M219 M218 , 1(N01) M248~f x [...] , [...] x , 1(N24) M218 , 1(N01) x x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 343. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008541) — 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.