Position in chronology
MDP 31, 019
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been fully deciphered. It is a simple ledger: seven entries, each pairing an unreadable sign (probably a commodity, person, or household) with a quantity, followed on the reverse by a grand total of 64 — which is exactly the sum of the individual entries. Even though we cannot read what was being counted, the arithmetic still checks out five thousand years later.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet. On the front, seven line items: the first entity gets 10 units, the second gets 4, and five more entities get 10 units each — though two of the item labels are now broken away or illegible, and none of the labels can be read anyway, since the script is undeciphered. On the back, the accountant wrote the bottom line: 64 units in total, which is precisely what the front-side entries add up to. Whatever was being counted — goods, rations, animals, or workers — the bookkeeping was exact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) M059 — 1(N14) [= 10 units] M252~i — 4(N01) [= 4 units] M136~k — 1(N14) [= 10 units] M210~b — 1(N14) [= 10 units] [sign lost] — 1(N14) [= 10 units] [sign illegible] — 1(N14) [= 10 units] M147 — 1(N14) [= 10 units] (reverse) [sign lost] — 6(N14) 4(N01) [= 64 units; the total]
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
M059 , 1(N14) M252~i# , 4(N01) M136~k , 1(N14) M210~b , 1(N14) [...] , 1(N14) x , 1(N14) M147 , 1(N14) [...] , 6(N14) 4(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 31, 019. 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 (P009359) — 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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