Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 0259
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE — roughly the same moment writing was taking shape in southern Mesopotamia. It survives only as five broken pieces, and just one of them still carries readable impressions. The script is still largely undeciphered: the numbers are perfectly clear (20, 2, 30, 13, and a grain measure), but the signs identifying who or what they count cannot yet be read. It is a ledger whose arithmetic we can follow and whose subject we cannot.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken ledger sheet. The first entry records 20 units plus one measure of grain; the next, under a different heading, another 20. Then come smaller postings — 2 units, 2 more, 2 again — followed by 20, then 30, and finally 13. Each figure is attached to a group of signs naming a commodity, an official, or a household, but those names are in a script no one can yet read. Several lines are lost entirely to damage, and the other fragments of the tablet are blank or worn smooth.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse […] — 20 (units), 1 (measure of grain, N39B). M304 M002 — 20 (units). […] — [broken numeral]. […] — 2 (units). M049~m M372 M010 — 2 (units). M230 M009 M314 M377~e M218 — 2 (units). […] … M057 |M305+M136| M056~f M288 — 20 (units). M057 … — 30 (units). […] — [broken numeral]. […] … |M218+M101| M371 — 13 (units: 1×10 + 3). (The remaining fragments preserve no legible signs.)
Our translation engine — Opus 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(N14)# 1(N39B) M304# M002 , 2(N14) x , [...] x , 2(N01)# M049~m# M372 M010# , 2(N01) M230 M009 M314 M377~e M218 , 2(N01) [...] x M057 |M305+M136| M056~f M288 , 2(N14) M057# x , 3(N14) x , [...] [...] x |M218+M101|# M371 , 1(N14) 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 0259. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009178) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.