Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 0259
About this tablet
A badly fragmented proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3200–2900 BCE — one of the very earliest writing systems known. Each surviving line records an undeciphered commodity sign or cluster followed by a numerical quantity, the standard format of proto-Elamite bookkeeping. Because proto-Elamite script has never been fully deciphered, the commodity names and the nature of the goods being counted remain unknown; only the numbers can be read with confidence. The tablet is significant simply as evidence that the ancient city of Susa maintained its own sophisticated administrative bureaucracy in parallel with, and independently of, the early writing tradition developing in Mesopotamia at the same time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged ledger page from one of the world's first writing systems — a script we still cannot fully read. Each line seems to record a type of commodity (animals, grain, or some other managed resource) alongside a count. Most entries show quantities of two large units or two small units; one entry reaches three large units, and the final surviving line records one large unit and three small ones. The commodity names are lost both because the tablet is broken and because proto-Elamite itself remains undeciphered. What survives is essentially the skeleton of an ancient accountant's worksheet: categories and numbers, but no readable labels.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , 2(N14) 1(N39B) M304[?] M002[?] , 2(N14) [x] , [...] [x] , 2(N01) M049~m M372 M010[?] , 2(N01) M230 M009 M314 M377~e M218[?] , 2(N01) [...] [x] M057 |M305+M136| M056~f M288 , 2(N14) M057[?] [x] , 3(N14) [x] , [...] [...] [x] |M218+M101|[?] M371 , 1(N14) 3(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 2(N14)# 1(N39B) M304# M002 , 2(N14) x , [...] x , 2(N01)# M049~m# M372 M010# , 2(N01) M230 M009 M314 M377~e M218 , 2(N01) [...] x M057 |M305+M136| M056~f M288 , 2(N14) M057# x , 3(N14) x , [...] [...] x |M218+M101|# M371 , 1(N14) 3(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 0259. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009178) — 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.