Position in chronology
MDP 17, 334
About this tablet
A small proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been deciphered. Each line pairs a group of signs — probably a commodity, an official, or a household — with a quantity written in a numerical system whose units we can partly reconstruct. It is one of the earliest bookkeeping documents from Iran, showing that the administrators of Susa were counting and allocating goods in writing at the same time as their neighbours in Uruk, but with their own independent script.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger of ten short entries. The first lists a group of five signs with a tally of one unit; the second, a single sign with one unit of a different denomination; the third, a damaged entry with one large unit and one small one. The fourth entry begins with two signs but its quantity is lost. Entries five through seven each record one unit, the seventh tied to the sign M009. Entry eight, possibly including M371, and entry nine are too broken to read their numbers. The final entry, against the sign M011, records one unit plus one of the smaller denomination. The signs themselves cannot be read as words; only the counts can be followed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: (line 1) M388 M380 |M218+M320| M347 M377~e — 1 (N01) (line 2) M222 — 1 (N30C) (line 3) [sign illegible] — 1 (N01) 1 (N24) (line 4) M175 M380 [sign illegible] [...] — [...] (line 5) [...] — 1 (N30C) [+ n] (line 6) [two signs illegible] — 1 (N30C) (line 7) [...] M009 — 1 (N30C) (line 8) [two signs illegible] M371(?) — [...] (line 9) [sign illegible] — [number lost] (line 10) M011 — 1 (N24) 1 (N30C)
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
M388# M380 |M218+M320| M347 M377~e , 1(N01) M222 , 1(N30C) x , 1(N01) 1(N24) M175 M380 x [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N30C)# n x x , 1(N30C) [...] M009 , 1(N30C)# x x M371#? , [...] x , n M011 , 1(N24) 1(N30C)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 334. 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 (P008532) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.