Position in chronology
MDP 17, 339
About this tablet
A fragmentary proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, dating to around 3100 BCE — among the earliest written records anywhere. The script has never been fully deciphered, so the signs can be catalogued but not read; what survives is a list of six entries, each pairing an undeciphered sign-group with a number. It is a bookkeeping document from an economy that was counting and recording goods before anyone could write a sentence.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What remains is a ledger with six broken entries. Each line names something with signs we cannot read and then gives a count: the first line's number is lost; the second records 1 unit; the third's number is lost; the fourth records 1 unit; the fifth records 4 of a larger unit; and the last line's number is lost. The item labelled M376 recurs in four of the entries, so the tablet probably tracked one category of goods under several headings. The edges are broken away and the rest of the account is gone.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M081 M387-variant [x] M376 — [quantity lost] [...] M376 — 1 (N01) M054-variant [x] [...] — [quantity lost] [...] M376 — 1 (N01) M388 [x] — 4 (N14) [...] M136-variant [x] M376 — [quantity lost] (remainder 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
[...] M081 M387~l x M376# , [...] [...] M376 , 1(N01) M054~b x [...] , [...] [...] M376# , 1(N01) M388 x , 4(N14)# [...] M136~a x M376 , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 339. 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 (P008537) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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