Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4791
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from ancient Susa (in modern Iran), dating to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–3000 BCE. It records quantities of goods or commodities — likely livestock, grain, or similar managed resources — distributed across several entries, each pairing an undeciphered commodity sign with a numerical notation. Proto-Elamite remains one of the world's undeciphered writing systems, so the individual sign values cannot be rendered into a known language, but the accounting structure is clear: this is the ancient bureaucratic ledger of an early complex society. Its survival in the Louvre gives a rare glimpse into the administrative machinery of early Elamite civilization, contemporary with the earliest Sumerian records from southern Iraq.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet is an accounting record whose commodity terms we cannot yet read — the writing system it uses has never been deciphered. What we can see is the structure: a heading sign at the top, then a series of entries each pairing one or more category signs (labeling some type of good or animal) with a number. The quantities range from single units up to groups of 45 or more. The final line preserves a damaged total or subtotal using a combination of larger and smaller numerical signs. The rest is lost to breakage.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM005~a , M305 M388 M009 M004 [...] , [...] [...] , 9(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 4(N14) 5(N01)# [...] , 3(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 1(N14) 6(N01)# [...] , 1(N14) M228~d M265~1? , 4(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , [...] M246~b M263 , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 4(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N39B)# 2(N30C)# 1(N30D)#
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M005~a , M305 M388 M009 M004 [...] , [...] [...] , 9(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 4(N14) 5(N01)# [...] , 3(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 1(N14) 6(N01)# [...] , 1(N14) M228~d M265~1? , 4(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , [...] M246~b M263 , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 4(N01)# [...] , [...] 1(N39B)# 2(N30C)# 1(N30D)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4791. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009228) — 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.