Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4838
About this tablet
A small proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa (southwestern Iran), dating to the late fourth millennium BCE — roughly 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities of one or more commodities under sign-categories that remain undeciphered; the numerals N14 and N01 are the clearest readable elements, representing counted units in the proto-Elamite numerical system. The tablet is broken into several fragments and is heavily damaged, leaving most sign sequences incomplete. Proto-Elamite is the world's most extensively attested undeciphered writing system, and tablets like this are the core of ongoing efforts to crack it.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet lists quantities of goods — the exact commodities are unknown because the script has not been deciphered. What survives clearly are two numerical entries: one records a total of one large unit plus one small unit (roughly '11' in this system), and two further lines each record a single unit count. The surrounding commodity and category signs are present but unreadable. Several lines are broken away entirely, and the rest is too damaged to reconstruct.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] M175+M288 M324~d M261~d1 , [...] [...] M305+M136 M261~d1 , 1(N14) 1(N01) [x] M263 , [...] [...] x , 1(N01) [x] M263 , 1(N01) M175+M388 [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] |M175+M288|# M324~d M261~d1 , [...] [...] |M305+M136|# M261~d1 , 1(N14) 1(N01) x M263# , [...] [...] x , 1(N01) x M263 , 1(N01)# |M175+M388|# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4838. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009245) — 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.