Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 0298
About this tablet
A small proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the very earliest writing in human history. Like most proto-Elamite tablets, it records quantities of undeciphered commodity signs organized into numbered entries, almost certainly part of a temple or palatial redistribution system. Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered, so we can read the numbers but not the goods or people they refer to. What survives here is a partial account — probably livestock, grain, or labor rations — broken across at least seven lines, with significant damage to the top and right edge.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet lists several categories of goods (or possibly animals or people) identified by signs we cannot yet read, each followed by a quantity. One entry records 3 units of something; another records 7 units; a third records 2 larger units plus 4 smaller ones; a final legible entry records 2 small units. The beginning of the tablet is broken, and several lines are too damaged to read. What remains is a fragment of an ancient accounting ledger.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Sign cluster: M377?, M263, M380~b?, M371, M003~b], [...] [...] M376?, 3(N01) [...] [sign?], [...] [...], 7(N01) M003~b, M388: 2(N14) 4(N01) M054? [...], [...] M003~b, M054 [...]: [...] 2(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
x M377# M263 M380~b M371 M003~b , [...] [...] M376# , 3(N01) [...] x , [...] [...] , 7(N01) M003~b M388 , 2(N14) 4(N01) M054# [...] , [...] M003~b M054 [...] , [...] 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 0298. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009182) — 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.