Position in chronology
SE 125
About this tablet
An accounting tablet from the dawn of writing, around 3100 BCE, probably from Susa in southwestern Iran. A bookkeeper recorded six entries of goods or personnel — each identified by signs whose meanings are now lost — and then added them up: the quantities 1+1+4+3+1+6 equal exactly the 16 written as the total on the other side. We cannot read what was being counted, but we can watch the arithmetic work: this is administration, not literature, from a time before writing could record spoken language.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a tally sheet with a heading and six line items. Under a category marked at the top, the clerk lists: one of the first item, one of the second, four of the third, three of the fourth, one of the fifth, and six of the sixth (the last figures are chipped but legible). On the back, the account is closed with a grand total: sixteen units, written as one 'ten' sign plus six 'ones' — and indeed the line items sum to sixteen. What exactly was being counted — goods, animals, workers — is written in signs no one can read anymore.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Header) M252~q — [label/classifier, undeciphered] M001 M376 — 1 unit (1 N01) M387~c M387~c — 1 unit (1 N01) M365 — 4 units (4 N01) M175 M248~b(?) — 3 units (3 N01) M125 (damaged) M310 — 1 unit (1 N01) M310 (damaged) — 6 units (6 N01, numeral partly damaged) (Reverse/total) M376 — 16 units (1 N14 + 6 N01)
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
M252~q , M001 M376 , 1(N01) M387~c M387~c , 1(N01) M365 , 4(N01) M175 M248~b? , 3(N01) M125# M310 , 1(N01) M310# , 6(N01)# M376 , 1(N14) 6(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — SE 125. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Couvent Saint-Etienne, Jerusalem (P009442) — 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
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.