Position in chronology
MDP 17, 428
About this tablet
An administrative account written at Susa, in southwestern Iran, around 3100–2900 BCE, in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that has never been deciphered. What survives is a list of entries, each pairing a group of signs (probably commodities, people, or institutions) with a quantity punched into the clay. We can read the numbers — tens, units, and fractions — but not what was being counted. Tablets like this show that Susa's bureaucrats were keeping careful accounts at the very dawn of writing, in a system parallel to but distinct from Mesopotamian cuneiform.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a bookkeeper's tally, most of it now unreadable. Line by line it records: a heading of some kind; an item whose quantity is broken away; something counted at eleven units (one ten plus one); another item whose total is lost; an item at one unit plus two fractions; an entry too damaged to read; another item at one unit; and a final broken entry that seems to repeat the count of one unit and two fractions. The names of the goods or parties involved are written in the undeciphered proto-Elamite script, so we know the amounts but not what they measured — the tablet's subject is lost with its script.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) (Entry 1) Sign M351~m (heading?) — , (Entry 2) Signs M377 M377 M388 M125 M102~k(?) M096(?) [...] — [quantity lost] (Entry 3) [signs lost] — 1(N14) 1(N01) (i.e. one large unit of ten and one single unit) (Entry 4) Signs M384~d1 M124 M251~c3 M218~b(?) M001(?) — [quantity lost] (Entry 5) Signs M356 M387 M218 — 1(N01) 2(N39B) (one unit and two fractional units) (Entry 6) [illegible sign] — [quantity lost] (Entry 7) [...] signs M263 M281~d(?) [illegible] — 1(N01) (one unit) (Entry 8) [signs lost] — [1(N01) 2(N39B)] (one unit and two fractional units; numerals damaged) (The text is proto-Elamite and remains undeciphered: the non-numerical signs cannot be assigned phonetic or semantic values. Only the numerals — one ten-unit, several single units, and fractional units — can be read with confidence.)
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
M351~m , M377 M377 M388 M125# M102~k2#? M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N14) 1(N01) M384~d1 M124 M251~c3 M218~b? M001#? , [...] M356 M387 M218 , 1(N01) 2(N39B) x , [...] [...] M263 M281~d#? x , 1(N01) [...] , [...] 1(N01)# 2(N39B)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 428. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008626) — 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.