Position in chronology
MDP 31, 015
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that remains largely undeciphered. A scribe opened with a classifying rubric sign and then listed six entries, each pairing sign-clusters — probably commodities, institutions, or persons — with quantities in the proto-Elamite numerical systems. We can read the numbers with confidence, but the words attached to them are still a mystery: this is bookkeeping from one of humanity's earliest writing systems whose language we cannot yet read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger. It opens with a header marking what kind of account it is, then runs through six line items, each naming something — a product, a person, or an office we can no longer identify — followed by its quantity: two of one thing, ten of another, twenty each of two more, two of a fifth item (the number here is damaged), and six of a last item whose name is broken away. A final entry of one unit closes the account. The counting is perfectly clear; the names of what was counted are written in signs no one can yet decipher. The back of the tablet is blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading) M157 (document-type rubric) M305 M033~c M270~d — 2 (units, N01) M036 (compounded with 1 N30D) — 1 (tens-unit, N14) M387~ca, M036 (compounded with 1 N30C) — 2 (tens-units, N14) M305 M387~ha, M036 (compounded with 1 N30C) — 2 (tens-units, N14) M340 M054 M265~2 — 2 (units, N01) [numeral partly damaged] [broken sign], M036 (compounded with 1 N30D) — 6 (units, N01) 1 (unit, N01) (Reverse uninscribed)
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
M157 , M305 M033~c# M270~d# , 2(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 1(N14) M387~ca |M036+1(N30C)| , 2(N14) M305 M387~ha |M036+1(N30C)| , 2(N14) M340 M054# M265~2# , 2(N01)# [x] |M036+1(N30D)| , 6(N01) 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 31, 015. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009355) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.