Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4838
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in the proto-Elamite script around 3100–2900 BCE. Its signs are almost entirely undeciphered, but the numerals can still be read: one entry is counted as 1(N14) plus 1(N01) — eleven units in the decimal counting system — and two later entries each register a single unit. The reverse was left blank, as is normal for these short one-sided ledger notes. Broken on several sides and heavily worn, it is a fragment of the earliest bureaucratic archive of Iran, kept today in the Louvre with the excavation number 4838 painted on its back in red.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of a ledger. The first surviving entry names a commodity or account whose amount is lost in the break. The second records eleven units of another item. Two further entries each register a single unit, and one more line begins with a sign but breaks off before the quantity. The sign values themselves are unknown — only the numbers can still be read — and the back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobverse […] |M175+M288|, M324~d, M261~d1 — […] […] |M305+M136|, M261~d1 — 1(N14) 1(N01) [= 11 units] … M263 — […] […] … — 1(N01) … M263 — 1(N01) |M175+M388| […] — […] reverse (uninscribed)
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
[...] |M175+M288|# M324~d M261~d1 , [...] [...] |M305+M136|# M261~d1 , 1(N14) 1(N01) x M263# , [...] [...] x , 1(N01) x M263 , 1(N01)# |M175+M388|# [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4838. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009245) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.