Position in chronology
MDP 17, 381
About this tablet
A fragment of a proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE, among the earliest written records outside Mesopotamia. It lists quantities of some commodity against undeciphered category signs, ending in what looks like a total. The proto-Elamite script has never been fully read, so we can count the numbers but cannot name the goods or the people involved.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving text is a tally sheet. One entry records 3 units of something; the next begins with a category sign whose quantity is lost. Another entry gives 3 units, then a two-sign heading whose number is broken away. An entry under the recurring sign M288 records a larger amount: 1 of the big unit, 4 of the middle unit, and 2 of the small one, with the rest lost. The final line, probably a total, reads 1 middle unit, 3 small units, 1 fractional unit, and one each of two further marked units. The edges of the tablet are broken and the beginnings of most lines are gone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse [...] : 3 (N14@b) units M263~1 ... [...] : [...] [...] : 3 (N14) units M153 M068~a [...] : [...] M288 : 1 (N45) 4 (N14) 2 (N01)# [...] [...] : 1 (N14) 3 (N01) 1 (N39B) 1 (N14@b) 1 (N01@b)
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
[...] , 3(N14@b) M263~1 x [...] , [...] [...] , 3(N14) M153 M068~a [...] , [...] M288 , 1(N45) 4(N14) 2(N01)# [...] [...] , 1(N14) 3(N01) 1(N39B) 1(N14@b) 1(N01@b)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 381. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008579) — 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.