Position in chronology
MDP 17, 449
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that remains undeciphered. It records quantities — one entry counts at least one large unit and four smaller units, others record fractional amounts — attached to signs whose meanings we cannot yet read, likely commodities, categories, or institutions. Tablets like this are among the oldest accounting documents in Iran, showing that Susa's administrators borrowed the idea of bookkeeping from Mesopotamia but ran it in their own script. About half the tablet is broken away.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an account ledger. One line, filed under a category sign we cannot read (M288), records a quantity of one large unit and four medium units of something — the rest of that line is broken. A following broken line preserves two small fractional amounts. Another line, filed under a different heading sign (M157), records one medium unit before breaking off. The last surviving line — possibly a total — records three small fractional quantities. What was being counted, and for whom, is lost with the broken half of the tablet; the back is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) (Entry headed by sign) M288~f: 1(N34) 4(N14) [...] [...]: [...] 1(N30C@b) 1(N30D@b) (Entry headed by sign) M157~a: 1(N14) [...] (Total/final entry): [...] 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) (The right portion of the tablet is broken away; the reverse is uninscribed apart from modern museum ink numbers.)
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
M288~f , 1(N34) 4(N14)# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N30C@b)# 1(N30D@b)# M157~a , 1(N14)# [...] [...] , [...] 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 17, 449. 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 (P008647) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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