Position in chronology
MDP 17, 383
About this tablet
A small broken fragment of a proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE. It lists quantities of an unidentified commodity, each entry headed by a sign for a person, institution or product and followed by numerals. Proto-Elamite script is still undeciphered, so the counting system is readable but the headings are not; fragments like this are the raw material from which the script is being slowly reconstructed.
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 entries, each pairing an account heading with a tally. One line records 2 units; another records fractional quantities (a small unit and an even smaller one). An entry under the sign-pair M438–M209 notes 1 large unit plus 1 single unit. Another entry lists 2 units; one headed by the sign M059 records 1 unit of a different (grain-type) measure. Further down, an entry gives 1 small unit and 1 fraction. The beginnings of most lines and the rest of the tablet are broken away, and the reverse is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse (fragmentary): [...] , [...] 2 (N01) [...] , [...] 1 (N30C)? 1 (N30D) M438 M209~a , 1 (N14) 1 (N01) [...] [sign lost] , 2 (N01) M059 , 1 (N39B) [sign lost] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1 (N24) 1 (N30C) [sign lost] [...] , [...] (Reverse: uninscribed apart from museum number.)
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
[...] , [...] 2(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N30C)#? 1(N30D) M438 M209~a , 1(N14) 1(N01)# [...] x , 2(N01) M059 , 1(N39B) x [...] , [...] [...] , [...] 1(N24)# 1(N30C) x [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 383. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008581) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.