Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 0298
About this tablet
A broken clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script. Each line pairs a heading of one or more signs — the commodity, the person, or the institution being accounted for — with a number impressed with a round stylus: 3, 7, 24, 2. We can read the arithmetic perfectly well, but not the words; proto-Elamite remains one of the few writing systems of the ancient world that has never been cracked. It is a reminder that the earliest use of writing almost everywhere was bookkeeping.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger, and only the figures survive intact. A first entry lists a string of commodity or account signs, but the amount is broken away. The next entries record 3 units, then a line too damaged to read, then 7 units, then 24 units against another heading. Two further entries follow — one with its number lost entirely, one ending in 2 units. The back of the tablet carries nothing legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] M377 M263 M380~b M371 M003~b — [quantity lost] 2. [...] M376 — 3 (N01) 3. [...] ... — [quantity lost] 4. [...] — 7 (N01) 5. M003~b M388 — 24 (2 N14, 4 N01) 6. M054 [...] — [quantity lost] 7. M003~b M054 [...] — [... ] 2 (N01) (Reverse: uninscribed or effaced apart from traces; no legible signs.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
x M377# M263 M380~b M371 M003~b , [...] [...] M376# , 3(N01) [...] x , [...] [...] , 7(N01) M003~b M388 , 2(N14) 4(N01) M054# [...] , [...] M003~b M054 [...] , [...] 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 0298. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009182) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.