Position in chronology
MDP 31, 038
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE — one of the world's earliest bookkeeping documents, in a script that remains largely undeciphered. It records quantities of an unidentified commodity, tallied with an elaborate numerical notation of circles and wedges pressed into the clay: some entries run into the hundreds or thousands of units, others are tiny fractions. We can read the arithmetic with fair confidence, but the sign naming what was being counted has never been deciphered.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger page. The first two entries, partly broken away, record very large quantities — on the order of several hundred to a few thousand units each, with tens tacked on at the end. The third entry is intact: 523 units (eight sixties, four tens, and three ones) of a commodity whose name we can no longer read. The last two entries record small amounts — a single unit plus assorted fractions in one line, and four fractional measures in the other. The back of the tablet is blank. What exactly was being counted — grain, animals, labor, rations — is lost with the undeciphered script.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) [...] : [...] 2(N45) 1(N48) [...] 5(N14)# (illegible sign) : 2(N34) 1(N45) [...] 5(N14)# M038~b1 (undeciphered commodity sign) : 8(N34) 4(N14) 3(N01) [...] : 1(N01) 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) [...] : 4(N23) (Reverse: uninscribed) [If the numerals follow the sexagesimal system, line 3 records a quantity of 8×60 + 4×10 + 3 = 523 units of the commodity M038; lines 4–5 record small fractional quantities; lines 1–2 record large totals in the hundreds and thousands, partly broken.]
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
[...] , [...] 2(N45) 1(N48) [...] 5(N14)# x , 2(N34) 1(N45) [...] 5(N14)# M038~b1 , 8(N34) 4(N14) 3(N01) [...] , 1(N01) 1(N24) 1(N30C) 1(N30D) [...] , 4(N23)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 31, 038. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009377) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.