Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4797
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (in modern southwestern Iran), dated to the Uruk period, roughly 3200–2900 BCE. Proto-Elamite is one of the earliest writing systems in the world and remains undeciphered, so the signs can be read but not translated into words with known meaning. The tablet records quantities of commodities — likely animals, grain, or produced goods — assigned to or collected from named categories or officials, the standard content of early Susian accounting records. It is historically significant as a direct witness to the very beginnings of literate administration in ancient Iran, contemporaneous with the earliest Sumerian writing in Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The tablet opens with a heading or rubric sign whose meaning is unknown. The first legible entry records a commodity denoted by signs M319, M218, and M297, with a quantity of approximately 51 units (the exact number is partially damaged). A second entry — also recording M297 goods of a different category — totals 11 units. A third entry is too damaged to read fully. The final surviving entry registers a single unit of a compound commodity. The rest is lost or too broken to recover.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157~a [heading/rubric — function unknown] M319 M218 M297 : 51[+? units] [...] M325~d M380 M297 : 11 [units] M001 M388 M259 x [...] : [...] [...] |M106+M288| M218 M073~b : 1 [unit]
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 , M319 M218 M297 , 5(N14)# 1(N01)# [...] [...] M325~d M380 M297 , 1(N14) 1(N01) M001 M388 M259# x [...] , [...] [...] |M106+M288| M218 M073~b , 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4797. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009233) — 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.