Position in chronology
MDP 17, 413
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in one of the world's oldest — and still undeciphered — writing systems. It is a bookkeeping document: each line pairs a sign (probably naming a commodity, official, or household) with a quantity punched into the clay. We can read the numbers with fair confidence, but not what was being counted, which is exactly why tablets like this remain central to ongoing decipherment efforts.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a page from an accountant's ledger, roughly five thousand years old. Someone at Susa opened the record under a heading sign we can no longer read, then listed a series of entries: one item counted at 4 large units (plus a broken figure), another at 3 units and a fraction, others at 1, at 5, at 4 tens, at 2 tens, and a final entry at 6 large units; one quantity is lost entirely. The names of the goods or people behind each figure are written in the undeciphered proto-Elamite script, so the totals survive while the subjects of the account do not. The rest of the tablet is blank or too worn to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-Elamite account; the script is undeciphered, so the non-numerical signs are rendered by their standard sign numbers.) (Header/owner sign:) M365 , M056 (commodity/person sign) — 4(N34) [...] [... sign lost] — 3(N01) 1(N08A) M193~g — 1(N01) [...] M188~g — 5(N01) M059 — [quantity lost] M324~e — 4(N14) [... sign lost] — 2(N14) [... sign lost] — 6(N34) (Reverse: uninscribed apart from scattered numeral impressions; no further legible entries.)
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
M365 , M056 , 4(N34)# [...] [...] , 3(N01) 1(N08A) M193~g , 1(N01)# [...] M188~g , 5(N01) M059 , [...] M324~e , 4(N14)# [...] , 2(N14) [...] , 6(N34)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 413. 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 (P008611) — 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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