Position in chronology
MDP 17, 377
About this tablet
A broken proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, dating to around 3100 BCE — among the earliest written records anywhere. It lists several entries, each pairing a sign for a commodity or category with a numeral, and the reverse carries a single large numeral that is very likely the grand total. The proto-Elamite script is still undeciphered, so we can read the numbers but not 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 tally sheet. The surviving entries read roughly: one item (labelled with two signs) — 20; another item — 5; an item of category M203 — 10; another — 3; then an entry headed by sign M005, whose number is lost; then an entry of 2 large units and 10 more; then 3. The top line and most of the labels are broken away. On the back is a single big number, 1 of the highest unit, which seems to be the total of the whole account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: ... [...] , [...] [...] (sign M003~b) (sign M329) , 2(N14) [= 20 units] [...] , 5(N01) [= 5 units] (sign M203~c) , 1(N14) [= 10 units] [...] , 3(N01) [= 3 units] (sign M005~a) [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N45) 1(N14) [...] [= 2 large units, 10 units ...] [...] 3(N01) [= 3 units] Reverse: 1(N34) [= 1 unit of the large N34 order — a total]
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
x [...] , [...] [...] M003~b M329 , 2(N14)# [...] , 5(N01) M203~c , 1(N14) [...] , 3(N01) M005~a [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N45) 1(N14) [...] [...] 3(N01) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 377. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008575) — 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.