Position in chronology
MDP 17, 438
About this tablet
An accounting tablet in the proto-Elamite script from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's earliest and still undeciphered writing systems. It lists a series of entries, each pairing signs (likely commodities, workers, or households) with quantities in a measurement system related to grain capacity. Though we cannot read the words, the numbers show a functioning bureaucracy tracking goods long before any readable literature existed. The tablet is broken, and roughly half of each line's content is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragmentary ledger. Each surviving line records an item — identified by signs we can no longer read — followed by an amount: two units of one thing, one large measure of another, two units plus a smaller fraction of a third, and so on down the list, ending with an entry of two large units. The names of the goods or people involved are written in an undeciphered script, and the broken edges of the tablet have carried away parts of nearly every line, but the arithmetic skeleton of the account survives intact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse; upper portion broken) [...] — 2 (N39B, capacity units) M096 M099 [...] — [quantity lost] [...] ... M218 — 1 (N01) M240 M329 [...] — [quantity lost] [...] ... M057 — 2 (N39B) 1 (N24) [...] ... M066 — 1 (N39B) M146 M066 M096 [...] — [quantity lost] [...] M387 (ef-variant) M066 — 2 (N39B) 1 (N24) M004 — [quantity lost] M243 — 2 (N01) [...] (The signs designate commodities, persons, or institutions whose values remain undeciphered; only the numerical notations can be read with confidence. The remainder of the tablet is 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
[...] , 2(N39B) M096 M099 [...] , [...] [...] x M218 , 1(N01) M240 M329 [...] , [...] [...] x M057 , 2(N39B) 1(N24) [...] x M066 , 1(N39B) M146 M066 M096 [...] , [...] [...] M387~ef# M066# , 2(N39B) 1(N24) M004 , [...] M243 , 2(N01) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 438. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008636) — 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.