Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5045
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite administrative tablet from Susa, dated to the late Uruk period (roughly 3200–2900 BCE), recording quantities of goods or commodities under a series of undeciphered signs. Like most proto-Elamite tablets, the sign system has not been phonetically decoded, so what we can read are the numerical notations — counts of items — alongside commodity or category signs whose exact meanings remain unknown. Susa was a major urban centre in southwest Iran deeply connected to the Mesopotamian world, and tablets like this were the accounting backbone of its early palace or temple economy. This particular example is fragmentary, broken into several pieces, but enough survives to confirm it is a tally of multiple commodity entries, each assigned a numerical value.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a damaged accounting record listing several categories of goods, each followed by a quantity. The first legible entry records a count of one unit plus a fractional unit. Subsequent lines each log a different commodity sign paired with a tally — mostly single units, with one entry near the end recording twelve (one N14 plus two N01 units). Several lines are too broken or worn to read. The final surviving entry records a classifier or category marker followed by the number twelve.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] , 1+N01 1+N24 M318~a M318~a M371 , 1(N01) M377[...] , [...] [...] M347 M371[...] , [...] [...] M377~e [...] , [...] [...] M057~a , 1(N01) M219 M338~b [...] , [...] [...] |M131+M388| M101 M066 , 1(N01) M388 , 1(N14) 2(N01)
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 1(N01) 1(N24) M318~a1 M318~a1 M371 , 1(N01) M377# [...] , [...] [...] x M347 M371# [...] , [...] [...] x M377~e x [...] , [...] [...] x M057~a# , 1(N01) M219 M338~b# [...] , [...] [...] x |M131+M388| M101 M066 , 1(N01) M388 , 1(N14) 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5045. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009288) — 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.