Position in chronology
MDP 17, 408
About this tablet
A small, badly broken accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in proto-Elamite — one of the world's earliest writing systems, and one that remains largely undeciphered. The surviving entries pair undeciphered commodity or category signs with numerals, the fingerprint of bookkeeping: someone was counting goods, rations, or livestock for an institution. We can see the structure of the accounting even though we cannot yet read 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 ledger fragment. Only one figure survives intact: a single unit of some commodity, recorded against two category signs we can no longer read. Three more entries follow, each naming a product or account category — one written with the sign M048, others with variants of the sign M387 and related marks — but the quantities that once stood beside them are broken away. In modern terms it would read something like: 'Item A: 1 unit. Item B: [amount lost]. Item C: [amount lost]. Item D: [amount lost].' The rest of the tablet is destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, fragmentary — proto-Elamite account) Line 1: [...] ... (sign M218) (sign M297) — 1 unit (numeral N39B) Line 2: (sign M048~k, a commodity sign) [...] — [quantity lost] Line 3: [...] (sign M387~ca) (sign M318~a1) [...] — [quantity lost] Line 4: [...] ... (sign M387~o) (sign M009) (sign M298, damaged) [...] — [quantity lost] (remainder of tablet broken)
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 M218 M297 , 1(N39B) M048~k [...] , [...] [...] M387~ca M318~a1 [...] , [...] [...] x M387~o M009 M298# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 408. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008606) — 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.