Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4797
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3000 BCE in proto-Elamite — a script that remains largely undeciphered. The scribe opened with a single heading sign, then listed several entries, each naming something (a commodity, a person, or an institution) followed by a counted quantity impressed with a round stylus: 51 units in the first entry, 11 in the second, one in the last. We can read the numbers with confidence but not the words, so this is a ledger whose arithmetic survives while its subject matter is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a one-sign heading, then runs down a short list. First entry: a commodity or account named by three signs, charged at 51 units. Second entry: another item, partly broken away, at 11 units. Third entry is too damaged to give a figure. The last line, also broken at the start, records a single unit. The back of the tablet was left blank, and the bottom of the front has snapped off, taking the end of the account with it.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) (Heading:) M157~a M319 M218 M297 — 5(N14) 1(N01) [...] (= 51 units) [...] M325~d M380 M297 — 1(N14) 1(N01) (= 11 units) M001 M388 M259 ... [...] — [amount lost] [...] |M106+M288| M218 M073~b — 1(N01) (reverse: uninscribed apart from a few faint traces; lower portion of the obverse broken away)
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 , M319 M218 M297 , 5(N14)# 1(N01)# [...] [...] M325~d M380 M297 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M001 M388 M259# x [...] , [...] [...] |M106+M288| M218 M073~b , 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4797. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009233) — 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.