Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4806
About this tablet
This is a Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (modern southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — among the very earliest written records anywhere in the world. Like most Proto-Elamite tablets, it records quantities of goods or commodities under headings whose meaning scholars have not yet fully decoded, since Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered. The tablet is fragmentary and heavily damaged, but its structure — a heading sign, a series of commodity entries, and numerical notations — is typical of the accountancy tablets produced by the early urban bureaucracy at Susa. It is historically significant as a window into one of humanity's first experiments with large-scale record-keeping, running parallel to, and possibly influenced by, the slightly earlier Uruk administrative tradition 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 category marker whose meaning is still unknown. What follows is a list of entries, each pairing one or more commodity signs — also undeciphered — with a count: one large unit here, two medium units there, one again, two large units, two of another denomination, and finally one of the largest unit. The signs that recur between entries likely function as subtotal markers or classifiers. Much of the tablet is broken away, and the rest of the entries are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[Heading/rubric sign M157] [M081?] [M033] [M009~a] [M269~b?], [...] [...] [M325~d] [M304] [M278~e], 1 (large unit) [...] [M269~b], 1 (large unit) [M354], 2 (medium units) [...], 1 (large unit) [M354], 2 (large units) [...], 2 (impressed circle units) 1 (largest 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# , M081#? M033 M009~a M269~b# , [...] [...] M325~d M304 M278~e , 1(N01) [...] M269~b , 1(N01) M354 , 2(N14) [...] , 1(N01) M354 , 2(N01) [...] , 2(N30C@b) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4806. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009241) — 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.