Position in chronology
MDP 31, 024
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–3000 BCE in proto-Elamite — a script that has never been deciphered. What survives is a ledger of at least seven entries, each pairing a sign or sign-group (probably naming a commodity, an official, or an institution) with a counted quantity of one or two units. We can read the numbers but not the words: tablets like this show that full-blown bookkeeping spread from Mesopotamia to Iran at the very dawn of writing, even though the things being counted here remain a mystery.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short inventory list: something (its name written in a sign we can no longer read) — 2 units; another item — 1 unit; a third item — 1 unit; then an entry whose quantity is broken away; another entry of 1 unit; and two final lines too damaged to read at all. In modern terms it is a page from an account book — a clerk at Susa ticking off small quantities of goods or personnel against their labels — but because proto-Elamite is undeciphered, only the numbers speak; the item names are lost to us. The end of the tablet is broken.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Proto-Elamite account; the script is undeciphered — sign designations are given by their standard M-numbers) (entry 1) [sign M305+M342] (commodity/category, damaged) — 2 units (2 N01) (entry 2) signs M291, M371, M320 (damaged) — 1 unit (1 N01, damaged) (entry 3) [illegible sign], signs M301, M057 — 1 unit (1 N01) (entry 4) sign M263 (variant 1), sign M347 (damaged) [...] — [quantity lost] (entry 5) [entry heading lost] — 1 unit (1 N01) (entry 6) [three illegible signs] — [quantity lost] (entry 7) [three illegible signs] [...] — [quantity lost]
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
|M305+M342|# , 2(N01) M291 M371 M320# , 1(N01)# x M301 M057 , 1(N01) M263~1 M347# [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) x x x , [...] x x x [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 31, 024. 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 (P009364) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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