Position in chronology
MDP 17, 344
About this tablet
A broken proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, dating to the late fourth millennium BCE, among the oldest written records anywhere. The surviving text consists almost entirely of numerical notations—large and small units impressed with a round stylus—attached to commodity signs whose meanings are still undeciphered. It documents the administrative bookkeeping of an early urban economy, probably quantities of grain or rations, with the final line likely a running total.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists a series of quantities, each entered beside a lost or undeciphered item label. One entry records 1 large unit, 1 intermediate unit, 3 medium units and 3 small units. Another entry preserves only 2 medium units of a variant type. A third entry, tagged with two signs we cannot read, gives 1 small fractional unit, the rest lost. The last line, probably a total, gives 1 large unit, 1 intermediate unit, 4 medium units, 1 small unit and 3 fractional units. The beginnings of every line are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (fragmentary): [...] , 1 N34 1 N45 3 N14 3 N01 (numerical notation: one large unit, one N45 unit, three N14 units, three N01 units) [...] , [...] 2 N14@b (two N14-type units, variant form) M009(?) M388(?) , 1 N39B(?) [...] (commodity/category signs M009 and M388, tentative; one N39B unit) [...] , 1 N34 1 N45 4 N14 1 N01 3 N39B (one N34, one N45, four N14, one N01, three N39B units)
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(N34) 1(N45) 3(N14) 3(N01) [...] , [...] 2(N14@b) M009? M388? , 1(N39B)? [...] [...] , 1(N34) 1(N45) 4(N14) 1(N01) 3(N39B)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 344. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008542) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.