Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4805
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE — roughly the same moment that writing was taking hold in southern Mesopotamia. Its script has never been deciphered, so while the numerals can be read with confidence, the word-signs that name the commodities and the people or households responsible cannot. What survives is the skeleton of a ledger: a column of entries, each pairing a cluster of signs with a counted quantity. It is a reminder that the earliest writing was overwhelmingly bookkeeping, and that one of the world's oldest writing systems still keeps its vocabulary secret.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a list of about ten line items, each naming something and giving a number: one unit each for the first two entries, then a broken entry counted in two different measures, one more unit, five units, three units, ten of one unit for an entry marked with a compound sign, one unit for a long cluster of signs, five units for a repeat of that same compound sign, and finally a mixed total of one, four, and one in three different measures. The commodity names and the personal or institutional names are written in proto-Elamite and cannot be read. Two of the entries are broken away entirely, and the back of the tablet carries no surviving text.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) M051~b M264~a — 1 (N01) M262~ba — 1 (N01) [...] — 1 (N24) 2 (N30C) M051~b M263~b — 1 (N01) [...] — 5 (N01) M033~b M048~c M263~b(?) — 3 (N01) |M036 + 1(N30D)| — 1 (N14) |M305 + X|(?) M388(?) M009 M004 M218 M263~b1 — 1 (N01) |M036 + 1(N30D)| — 5 (N01) M297~b — 1 (N01), 4 (N39B), 1 (N24) (reverse: surface preserved but uninscribed / effaced — no text recoverable)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
M051~b# M264~a , 1(N01) M262~ba# , 1(N01) [...] , 1(N24)# 2(N30C) M051~b# M263~b , 1(N01) [...] , 5(N01) M033~b M048~c M263~b#? , 3(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 1(N14) |M305+X|? M388#? M009 M004 M218 M263~b1 , 1(N01) |M036+1(N30D)| , 5(N01) M297~b# , 1(N01) 4(N39B) 1(N24)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4805. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009240) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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