Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4767
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from ancient Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period, roughly 3300–3000 BCE. It records quantities of commodities — their exact nature unidentified — using proto-Elamite or proto-cuneiform sign sequences alongside numerical notations. The tablet is heavily fragmented, surviving in several broken pieces, and the commodity signs remain undeciphered. It belongs to the earliest layer of human record-keeping, when accounting systems were just being invented across the ancient Near East.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a list of goods or commodities, each line pairing one or more commodity classifiers with a numerical quantity. The first entry records one unit of something under M038~e and M288; the second, one unit of M297. A longer third entry lists a sequence of commodity signs against roughly two units. Further entries record single units of N24 measure for M218 and M297 respectively, with additional partial lines too broken to read fully. The rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M038~e M288, 1(N39B) [...] M297[?], 1(N39B) M305 M388 M146 M128[?] M096 M387~a M011[?] x, [2(N01)?] [...] x, 1(N24) M218 M243~h[?], 1(N39B) M297, [...] [...], 1(N01) M297, 1(N24) x, [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] M038~e M288# , 1(N39B) [...] M297#? , 1(N39B) M305 M388 M146 M128~dd M096 M387~a M011# x , 2(N01)#? [...] x , 1(N24) M218 M243~h# , 1(N39B) M297 , [...] [...] , 1(N01) M297 , 1(N24) x , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4767. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009205) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-sonnet-4-6 (2026-05-28/v6-glossary-aware).
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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.