Position in chronology
MDP 17, 096 + 325 + 380
About this tablet
A bookkeeping tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in Proto-Elamite — a script that has never been deciphered. It is an itemized account: ten entries, each pairing a compound sign (all built on the same base sign, M362, likely marking one category of goods, persons, or animals) with a counted quantity, from 3 up to 47 units. Reassembled from three separate fragments in the Louvre, it shows how accountants at the dawn of writing tracked inventories even though we can no longer read what exactly they were counting.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger page listing ten line items of a single class of commodity, each sub-type identified by its own label: 3 of the first kind, 6 of the second, 47 of the third, 40 of the fourth, 10 of the fifth, at least 10 of the sixth (the rest of that line is broken away), 5 of the seventh, 3 of the eighth, 33 of the ninth, and 21 of the tenth. What exactly was being counted — whether goods, workers, or animals — is locked behind the undeciphered Proto-Elamite script, but the arithmetic itself is perfectly legible: an accountant's running tally of a stock organized under one main heading.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-Elamite account; the signs are undeciphered, so entries are rendered as sign-designations with their numerical notations) M362+M005 (with) M207b : 3 units (3 N01) M362+M059d (with) M312a : 6 units (6 N01) M362+M384a : 47 units (4 N14, 7 N01) M362+M059 (with) M001+M379c : 40 units (4 N14) M362+M383c : 10 units (1 N14) M362+M158 : 10 units (1 N14) [+ broken] M362+M026h : 5 units (5 N01) M351c M362 : 3 units (3 N01) M362+M244(?) : 33 units (3 N14, 3 N01) M362+M099b : 21 units (2 N14, 1 N01)
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
|M362+M005|# M207~b , 3(N01)# |M362+M059~d| M312~a# , 6(N01)# |M362+M384~a| , 4(N14) 7(N01) |M362+M059| |M001+M379~c| , 4(N14) |M362+M383~c| , 1(N14) |M362+M158|# , 1(N14) [...] |M362+M026~h| , 5(N01) M351~c# M362 , 3(N01) |M362+M244?|# , 3(N14) 3(N01) |M362+M099~b|# , 2(N14) 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 096 + 325 + 380. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P008294) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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