Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4844
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dating to the Uruk period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), recording quantities of one or more commodities under a heading sign and distributed across several line entries with numerical notations. The reverse is essentially blank or too damaged to read. Proto-Elamite script remains undeciphered: the sign values are unknown, so the specific commodity, institution, or persons involved cannot be named — only the numerical structure of the accounting record is legible. Tablets like this are among the very earliest administrative documents in human history, evidence that sophisticated bookkeeping preceded fully readable writing by centuries.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet opens with a heading or label of unknown meaning. What follows is a list of entries, each combining one or more unreadable commodity or classifier signs with numerical counts: one entry records 3 units (N39B), another records 1 unit plus 2 smaller units plus 1 larger unit (N01, N39B, N24), another 5 units and 3 sub-units (N01, N39B). Several lines are too broken to read. The overall shape is clearly an accounting list — quantities of something assigned or measured — but because proto-Elamite writing is still undeciphered, what exactly is being counted remains unknown.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineM157 [heading/rubric] M217~a M377 M247~c M124 M377 M386~a M240 M096 x M288 [...] [...] M222~e x M218 , 3(N39B) M029~a M240 M096(?) [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) M218(?) x M096(?) , 5(N01) 3(N39B) M073~b(?) M242~b [...] , [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
M157 , M217~a# M377 M247~c# M124 M377 M386~a M240 M096 x M288# , [...] [...] M222~e x M218 , 3(N39B) M029~a# M240# M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) M218# x M096# , 5(N01)# 3(N39B) M073~b#? M242~b [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4844. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009249) — 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.