Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4761
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script. It is an account: a heading sign at the top, then a series of entries, each pairing a group of word-signs — the names of people, institutions, or commodities — with a number impressed as round or crescent-shaped marks. Because Proto-Elamite has never been fully cracked, we can read the arithmetic but not the words: the quantities are clear, the goods are not. The final line, a single large unit, looks like the running or grand total for the account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a heading, then lists entries one after another, each naming something — a person, an office, or a kind of goods — and giving its quantity. Two of the surviving entries are for 2 units, two more for 1 unit each; another line records one measure of one capacity unit plus one of a smaller one. Several entries have lost their numbers to breakage, and the words themselves belong to a script we cannot yet read. At the bottom stands a single large numeral, apparently the total. The rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) M157~a — (heading) M402, M111~a, M388, M146, [...] — [amount lost] [...] M314, M297, |M036+1(N30D)| — 2(N01) M107~a(?), M388, [x], [...] — [amount lost] [...] M057, |M260~1+1(N24)| — 1(N01) M036 — 2(N01) [...] [x] [x], M101, M066, M260~1 — 1(N01) [...] — 1(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N34) (The lower part of the obverse and the whole of the reverse are broken away or uninscribed; no further text is preserved.)
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 , M402 M111~a M388 M146 [...] , [...] [...] M314 M297 |M036+1(N30D)| , 2(N01) M107~a#? M388 x [...] , [...] [...] M057 |M260~1+1(N24)| , 1(N01) M036# , 2(N01) [...] x x M101# M066# M260~1# , 1(N01)# [...] , 1(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4761. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009199) — 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.