Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4788
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE — a period when the region used its own script, still largely undeciphered, alongside numerals that scholars can read confidently. The numbers here are clear: quantities of 40, 12, 13, 10 and 3 attached to various commodity or institutional signs, with a larger total-like figure at the end. The words remain silent, but the arithmetic does not: this is a ledger, someone's tally of goods or rations, kept by an administrator in one of the earliest bureaucracies on earth.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A short ledger, mostly numbers. The first entry records 40 units; then 12 of one commodity, 13 of another, and 10 of a third item listed under a longer string of signs. Two further lines are broken and their amounts are lost. Near the end come 3 units, then an entry combining 3 units with a measure of grain or liquid, and finally a larger closing figure — a big unit plus 30 plus 4 — which looks like a total. The commodity names themselves are written in the proto-Elamite script and cannot be read. The reverse of the tablet is blank apart from modern museum numbering.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse 1. [...] — 4(N14) [40] 2. [...] M288 — 1(N14) 2(N01) [12] 3. [...] M066(?) M288 — 1(N14) 3(N01) [13] 4. M387~a M111~i M242~b [...] — [numeral lost] 5. [...] M066 M352~o M218 M259(?) M218 M288 — 1(N14) [10] 6. M038~h [...] — [numeral lost] 7. [...] M288 — 3(N01) [3] 8. M047 [...] M288 — 3(N01)(?) 1(N39B)(?) 9. M288 — 1(N45) 3(N14) 4(N01) (Reverse uninscribed; only modern museum markings — "4788" and "Sb 15295" — are written on it.)
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
[...] , 4(N14) x M288 , 1(N14) 2(N01)# [...] M066# M288 , 1(N14) 3(N01) M387~a M111~i M242~b [...] , [...] [...] M066 M352~o M218 M259# M218 M288 , 1(N14) M038~h [...] , [...] [...] M288 , 3(N01) M047 x M288 , 3(N01)# 1(N39B)# M288 , 1(N45) 3(N14) 4(N01)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4788. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009225) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
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.