Position in chronology
SE 126
About this tablet
An administrative account in proto-Elamite, the still-undeciphered writing system used at Susa in southwestern Iran around 3100–2900 BCE. The tablet lists several entries, each pairing a sign or sign-cluster — probably commodities, persons, or institutions — with a counted quantity (one or two units where legible). Because proto-Elamite has never been cracked, we can read the numbers but not the things being counted; even so, tablets like this show a fully functioning bookkeeping bureaucracy operating in Iran at the very dawn of writing.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger with about seven entries, each closing with a tally. The opening entry is too damaged to make out. The second begins with a compound heading — perhaps an office or account name — followed by commodity terms, but its number is lost. The third entry records one unit of some classified commodity; the next records two units of another item. Two further entries are broken away entirely. The final line counts two units against a three-part sign cluster, possibly an institution or a compound product name. The back of the tablet carries only a few stray number marks. What was counted, we cannot say — the script has never been deciphered — but the arithmetic of the accounting survives intact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) (line 1) ... [entry illegible] (line 2) [compound sign M195+M038] ... [commodity sign M388] [sign M371] ... [...] — [quantity lost] (line 3) [...] [sign M314] [sign M128] [commodity sign M388] [sign M297] ... [classifier M206] — 1 (unit) (line 4) [sign M177] — 2 (units) (line 5) ... [entry illegible] — [quantity lost] (line 6) [...] — [...] (line 7) [compound sign-cluster M377+M320+M377] — 2 (units) (reverse: uninscribed apart from a few numeral impressions; no continuous text)
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 , |M195+M038|# x M388 M371 x [...] , [...] [...] M314# M128# M388 M297# x M206~d# , 1(N01) M177 , 2(N01) x , [...] [...] , [...] |M377+M320+M377| , 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — SE 126. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Couvent Saint-Etienne, Jerusalem (P009443) — 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.