Position in chronology
MDP 17, 418
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that remains undeciphered. A scribe recorded a series of entries — each an unreadable commodity or personnel sign followed by a numeral — under a heading sign, closing with what appears to be a summary figure. We can count what they counted, but we still cannot name it; tablets like this are the raw material for one of the last great decipherment problems.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with a heading and about seven line items. Each entry pairs a category sign — whose meaning is lost to us — with a quantity: one unit of one thing, a fraction of another, two tens of a third, one unit against the common sign M001, two more fractional units, then a damaged entry, and finally an entry of one small fraction plus ten. The account closes with a large-unit figure, apparently a total of sixty or a summary entry. Parts of the surface are broken away, so several of the items and one quantity are lost. The back of the tablet is blank apart from the modern museum number.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading) M157~a , M384~e M054 — 1 (N01) M297 — 1 (N39B) [...] [...] — 2 (N14) M001 — 1 (N01) M297 — 2 (N39B) M122 M054 [...] — [...] [...] ... — 1 (N30D), 1 (N14) (Subscript/total:) 1 (N34)
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
M157~a , M384~e M054 , 1(N01) M297 , 1(N39B)# [...] [...] , 2(N14) M001 , 1(N01) M297# , 2(N39B) M122# M054# [...] , [...] [...] x , 1(N30D)# 1(N14) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 418. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008616) — 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.