Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4756
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in Proto-Elamite — a script that has never been deciphered. It is plainly an account: a heading, then a column of short entries each followed by a small number, and near the end a larger figure that looks like a subtotal. Someone in an early Susa institution was tracking issues or receipts of a measured commodity, most likely grain, but who they were and what exactly they counted is still beyond us. The tablet's value lies in the arithmetic and the format, which we can read, even though the words remain silent.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A ledger sheet, badly damaged. It opens with a one-sign heading and then runs down a list of short entries, most of them credited with a single unit of the standard measure; two entries have lost their figures to breaks, and several of the sign groups are chipped past recognition. Toward the bottom one line carries a bigger figure — one large unit plus four of the small ones — which reads like a running total. A final sign sits alone at the end with no number beside it. Because Proto-Elamite has never been cracked, we can follow the accounting but not the words.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) 1. M157~a — [heading; no numeral] 2. M041~d(?) M319 M124 x |M218+M288| M066 |M029~l + 1(N08A)| — [quantity broken] 3. [x] M386~a M242~b(?) M066 — 1(N39B) 4. M259 M260~1 M096 — 1(N39B) 5. M124(?) M371 [...] — [quantity broken] 6. [x] — 1(N39B) 7. [x] M230(?) [...] — 1(N39B) 8. [x] [x] — 1(N39B) 9. |M029~l + 1(N08A)| M297 — 1(N01) 4(N39B) 10. |M305+M342|(?) — [no numeral preserved] (No word-level translation is possible: the Proto-Elamite script is undeciphered. The signs above are cited by their standard sign-list numbers; only the numerical notations — units of the capacity system N39B, N08A, N01 — can be read with confidence.)
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
M157~a , M041~d#? M319 M124 x |M218+M288| M066 |M029~l+1(N08A)| , [...] x M386~a M242~b#? M066 , 1(N39B) M259 M260~1 M096 , 1(N39B) M124#? M371 [...] , [...] x , 1(N39B) x M230#? [...] , 1(N39B) x x , 1(N39B) |M029~l+1(N08A)| M297 , 1(N01) 4(N39B) |M305+M342|#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4756. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009194) — 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.