Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4847
About this tablet
A Proto-Elamite administrative tablet from ancient Susa (modern Shush, southwestern Iran), dating to roughly 3100–2900 BCE — one of the earliest writing systems in human history, and one that remains undeciphered. Like most Proto-Elamite records, this tablet appears to be an accounting document: each line pairs one or more commodity or category signs with a numeral, tallying goods, animals, or personnel under institutional control. The tablet survives in several broken fragments (visible in the photograph), and many sign readings carry uncertainty markers. It is a vivid relic of the earliest bureaucratic record-keeping in the ancient Near East, contemporary with — and possibly influenced by — the earliest Sumerian writing from Uruk.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This tablet records a series of entries, each assigning a quantity to a category of goods or persons whose exact nature we cannot yet read — the script remains undeciphered. One entry counts 1 of sign-group M376; another records 2 of a commodity involving M371; a further entry logs 3 of something; and so on through roughly ten line-entries, several of which are too broken to read at all. The reverse of the tablet appears uninscribed or too eroded to make out. The rest of the text is lost in the breaks.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] x M376, 1 M009 [...], [...] [...] x M371[?] x, 2 M318[?] M004 M218 M305[?], 1 [...], 3 M230 M096 M152~d, 1 |M131+M388| M263 [...], [...] x M376, 1 M352~n [...] M218 M376, 1 [...], [...]
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] x M376 , 1(N01) M009 [...] , [...] [...] x M371# x , 2(N01) M318# M004 M218 M305# , 1(N01) [...] , 3(N01) M230 M096 M152~d , 1(N01) |M131+M388| M263 [...] , [...] x M376 , 1(N01) M352~n [...] M218 M376 , 1(N01) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4847. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009252) — 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.