Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4769
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script. It records four entries — each a short string of commodity or category signs followed by a quantity — and then, on the reverse, a single grand total that exactly matches the sum of the individual amounts (three units of the larger measure plus one small unit and one fractional unit). Even though nobody can pronounce a word of it, the arithmetic is transparent: this is a bookkeeper's tally, balanced and checked, from one of the earliest writing systems on earth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Under a single heading sign, the scribe lists four deliveries. The first, of a commodity written with a string of four signs, comes to one large unit. The second, a different category, amounts to one small unit and one fractional measure. The third entry — partly broken away — is again one large unit, and so is the fourth, whose commodity signs are damaged. The reverse carries the total: three large units, one small unit, and one fraction. The figures add up exactly.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Heading:) M157 M177~a M388 M032 M297 M288 — 1(N14) M348 M288 — 1(N01) 1(N39B) M292 M388 M146 M032 M332~g [...] — 1(N14)(?) [...] M347 M219(?) M101 — 1(N14) (reverse / summation) M288 — 3(N14) 1(N01) 1(N39B)
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 M177~a M388 M032 M297 M288 , 1(N14) M348 M288# , 1(N01) 1(N39B) M292 M388 M146 M032 M332~g [...] , 1(N14)#? x M347 M219#? M101 , 1(N14) M288# , 3(N14) 1(N01) 1(N39B)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4769. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009207) — 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.