Position in chronology
RA 050, 202 01
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100 BCE in proto-Elamite — one of the world's earliest writing systems and one that remains undeciphered. The scribe listed a series of items or persons, most counted as single units, using signs whose meanings are still unknown to modern scholarship. Tablets like this show that the first uses of writing in Iran, as in Mesopotamia, were bureaucratic: counting and tracking goods, animals, or workers. What exactly was being counted here, no one alive today can read.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with several one-line entries, most of them tallying exactly one unit of something. Each entry names an item or category using signs we can no longer read, followed by the count: one of this, one of that, one of another. Two entries have lost their numbers to damage, and the first line and the end of the list are too broken to make out. If we could decipher the script, it would probably read like a short inventory or receipt — 'one of item A, one of item B, one of item C' — the everyday paperwork of an administrator at Susa five thousand years ago. The back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse — a proto-Elamite account; the script is undeciphered, so entries can only be rendered structurally) 1. [... illegible signs ...] 2. ... ... (sign M367) — 1 unit (N01) 3. (sign M367) (sign M001) ... (sign M372) — 1 unit (N01) 4. (sign M371) (sign M219) ... ... — [number lost] 5. ... ... (sign M097, variant h) (sign M218) — 1 unit (N01) 6. (compound sign M096+M029?) (sign M218, variant c) (sign M066) — 1 unit (N01) 7. (sign M230) — [number lost] 8. ... (sign M001) (sign M219) (sign M151, variant e) (sign M371, variant c) (sign M066) ... 9. ... — [remainder lost] (The reverse is uninscribed apart from surface scratches.)
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
x , x x M367~e , 1(N01) M367~e M001 x M372 , 1(N01) M371 M219 x x , [...] x x M097~h M218 , 1(N01) |M096+M029|? M218~c M066 , 1(N01) M230 , [...] x M001 M219 M151~e M371~c M066 x x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — RA 050, 202 01. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009480) — 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.