Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4762
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written a little after 3000 BCE — among the oldest writing on earth, and a script that has never been deciphered. The clay is broken into several joining fragments, photographed here from front, back and all four edges. What can still be read is the standard shape of such records: a heading sign, then a column of entries, each pairing an undeciphered commodity or personal sign with a number impressed by a round stylus, and a final larger figure that is almost certainly a grand total. We can follow the arithmetic and the layout of the bookkeeping without knowing what was being counted.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A ledger of small quantities, itemised one line at a time: three units against one commodity, one against another, one measure of a rationed good, ten of something else, then two, two, one again, further measures and finally two more — each set against a sign we can no longer read. Several entries have lost their figures where the tablet broke. The account closes with a single large round number, one hundred, standing alone as the sum of the whole reckoning.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse, column entries) M157 — (heading; no quantity preserved) [...] M054(?) — 3(N01) M001 — 1(N01) (illegible sign) — 1(N39B) M354 — 1(N14) M340 M054 — [quantity lost] [...] — 2(N01) M354 — 2(N01) M387~l M001 — 1(N01) (illegible sign) [...] — [quantity lost] M297~b — 1(N39B) M354 — [quantity lost] M387 (illegible sign) M354 — 2(N01) M341 — [quantity lost] (Total / final entry) 1(N34)
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 , [...] M054#? , 3(N01)# M001 , 1(N01) x , 1(N39B) M354 , 1(N14) M340 M054# , [...] [...] , 2(N01) M354 , 2(N01) M387~l M001 , 1(N01) x [...] , [...] M297~b , 1(N39B) M354 , [...] M387 x M354 , 2(N01) M341# , [...] 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4762. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009200) — 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.