Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4761
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the world's earliest writing systems, still undeciphered. The tablet records quantities of commodities (their exact nature unknown) assigned to or tallied under institutional categories, ending with what appears to be a summary total. Proto-Elamite tablets like this one were used by a complex urban administration at Susa to track goods, likely livestock or agricultural produce, in a manner closely parallel to the better-known Uruk accounting tablets from Mesopotamia. The script has never been fully deciphered, so only the numerical values and structural layout can be read with confidence.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged accounting record. The first line appears to be a heading or document-type label of some kind. The surviving entries each record one or more unidentified commodities alongside a quantity — two units here, one unit there — with several lines too broken to read. The final surviving entry gives what looks like a grand total or subtotal. The commodity names and institutional context remain unknown to modern scholarship; only the numbers can be read with certainty. Several lines are lost or illegible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric: M157~a] [Commodity A]: M402 M111~a M388 M146 [...] , [...] [...] M314 M297 |M036+1(N30D)| , 2(N01) [Commodity B]: M107~a#? M388 x [...] , [...] [...] M057 |M260~1+1(N24)| , 1(N01) M036# , 2(N01) [...] x x M101# M066# M260~1# , 1(N01)# [...] , 1(N39B) 1(N24) [Total/subtotal:] 1(N34)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157~a , M402 M111~a M388 M146 [...] , [...] [...] M314 M297 |M036+1(N30D)| , 2(N01) M107~a#? M388 x [...] , [...] [...] M057 |M260~1+1(N24)| , 1(N01) M036# , 2(N01) [...] x x M101# M066# M260~1# , 1(N01)# [...] , 1(N39B) 1(N24) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4761. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009199) — 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.