Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5239
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Susa (ancient Elam, in modern southwestern Iran), dating to the Uruk period — roughly 3300–3000 BCE, among the very earliest written records anywhere on earth. It records quantities of one or more commodities under classifier signs whose precise meanings remain undeciphered, but whose repeated structure marks this as an accounting or inventory entry typical of early proto-cuneiform bureaucracy. The tablet is heavily damaged, with most of the text on the visible face reduced to partial signs and numerical notations. It is a rare example of the earliest administrative writing from Susa, a major centre that adopted and adapted the proto-cuneiform recording system developed at Uruk.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives is a list of quantities — something like '1 large unit and 1 small unit' in one entry, then '[commodity signs too damaged to read] — 12 units and 2,' then another entry with a different quantity marker. The commodity signs repeated across the lines (M388, M285, M288) likely classify the type of goods being counted, but their exact meanings are not yet known. The rest of the tablet is too broken to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 1(N24) 1(N30D) M131~e# [...] , [...] [...] M304 M388 M285~b M288 , 1(N14) 2(N01)# [...] M388#? M285~c#? M288 , 1(N39B)# 1(N24)#
Our translation engine — Sonnet 4.6. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Transliteration
[...] , 1(N24) 1(N30D) M131~e# [...] , [...] [...] M304 M388 M285~b M288 , 1(N14) 2(N01)# [...] M388#? M285~c#? M288 , 1(N39B)# 1(N24)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5239. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009337) — 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.