Position in chronology
MDP 31, 031
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative account from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that remains largely undeciphered. A bookkeeper recorded five allocations of a grain product — measured in the special grain-capacity numbers — to five recipients or accounts identified by sign clusters we can no longer read, then closed the tablet with a grand total. Even without knowing the names, we can watch the accountant at work: this is arithmetic and audit, five thousand years old.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a grain ledger. Under a heading naming the responsible party or institution, five entries each assign a quantity of the same grain commodity to a different recipient or account: roughly two and a half large measures to the first, three-plus to the second, and comparable amounts to the remaining three. Several of the identifying labels are too damaged to read. The last line adds everything up into a single grand total of the commodity — the ancient equivalent of the 'TOTAL' row at the bottom of a spreadsheet. Who received the grain, we cannot say: their names are written in signs no one has yet deciphered.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Header) [Compound sign M327+X] — (owner/institution heading; no quantity) (Entry 1) M388, M387(?), M263, M314, M096(?), M388, M301, M372, M367 — 2 N51, 5 N23 (Entry 2) [two illegible signs], M066, M367 — 3 N51, 1 N23 (Entry 3) [compound sign M195+X], [four illegible signs], M367(?) — 2 N51, 7 N23 (Entry 4) M066, [three illegible signs], M367(?) — 2 N51(damaged), 6 N23 (Entry 5) M195(variant m), [two illegible signs], M367 — 2 N51, 7 N23 (Total) M367(?) — 2 N54, 3 N51, 6 N23 (All numerals belong to the proto-Elamite grain-capacity system, marked G; N54 > N51 > N23 in descending unit size. The final line, headed by the recurring commodity sign M367 alone, is the grand total of the preceding entries.)
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
|M327+X| , M388 M387? M263 M314~f M096#? M388# M301 M372 M367~c# , 2(N51G) 5(N23) x x M066 M367~c# , 3(N51G) 1(N23) |M195+X|# x x x x M367~c#? , 2(N51G) 7(N23) M066 x x x M367~c#? , 2(N51G)# 6(N23) M195~m# x x M367~c# , 2(N51G) 7(N23) M367~c#? , 2(N54G) 3(N51G) 6(N23)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 31, 031. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009371) — 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.