Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 0216
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to the late fourth millennium BCE — roughly contemporary with the earliest writing in Mesopotamia. It records quantities of commodities or goods under a series of undeciphered sign-groups, using a numerical system of unit tallies. The tablet is broken into several fragments, which explains its poor preservation and the many lacunae in the transliteration. Tablets like this are among the very earliest written records in human history, predating fully deciphered writing: we can read the numbers but the commodity signs remain undeciphered, leaving the exact nature of the goods or transactions a scholarly puzzle.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged administrative record listing several categories of goods alongside their quantities: one entry tallies 9 units of something, another 2 units, then 1 larger unit, then 2 larger units, 6 units, 1 unit, 2 units, 1 larger unit, and 5 units — with the final entry's quantity lost. The commodity names are written in an undeciphered script, so we can count the numbers but cannot yet say what was being counted. Much of the tablet is broken away and the rest is too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [M218], [...] [M296], 9(N01) [M024~1] [M262] [...], [...] [...], 2(N01) |M153+M342|, 1(N14) |M305+X|, 2(N14) [...], 6(N01)[?] [M387] × [M371][?], 1(N01) [...], 2(N01)[?] [M386~a] × [M057~a2], 1(N14) |M153+M342|, 5(N01) |M305+M342|[?], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , M218 , [...] M296# , 9(N01) M024~1 M262 [...] , [...] [...] , 2(N01) |M153+M342| , 1(N14) |M305+X| , 2(N14) [...] , 6(N01)# M387 x M371# , 1(N01) [...] , 2(N01)# M386~a x M057~a2 , 1(N14) |M153+M342| , 5(N01) |M305+M342|#? , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 0216. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009174) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.