Position in chronology
MDP 17, 451
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been fully deciphered. It records quantities of goods — the numbers are readable, but the signs naming the commodities and their owners remain unknown. Tablets like this show that the earliest writing at Susa, like at Uruk, was invented for bookkeeping, not literature. The tablet survives only in fragments, with several entries 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. The readable lines record: one unit of something, then twenty-three units of the commodity written with the sign M288, two units of the M050 commodity, three units of a lost item, an entry for the M217/M124 commodity whose amount is broken away, three small fractional measures of another lost item, a substantial eighty units under M288 again — probably a running or summary figure — and finally ten units of something whose name is broken. What was being counted we cannot say: the number signs are understood, but the commodity signs of Proto-Elamite have never been deciphered. The rest of the tablet is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , (illegible sign) — 1(N01) M288 — 2(N14) 3(N01) M050~f — 2(N01) [...] — 3(N01) M217~f M124 (damaged) — [...] [...] — 3(N39B) (damaged) M288 — 8(N14) [...] — 1(N14) (An account of undeciphered Proto-Elamite commodities: entries of one unit, twenty-three units [2 tens and 3 ones], two units, three units, a broken quantity, three fractional (N39B) measures, then a large entry of eight tens under M288, and a final broken entry of one ten.)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[...] , x , 1(N01) M288 , 2(N14) 3(N01) M050~f , 2(N01) [...] , 3(N01) M217~f M124# , [...] [...] , 3(N39B)# M288 , 8(N14) [...] , 1(N14)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 451. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008649) — 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.