Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4844
About this tablet
A small clay accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered proto-Elamite script. It is a ledger: each line pairs a group of signs — the name of a person, an institution, or a commodity — with a quantity written in impressed numerical marks. Because proto-Elamite words cannot yet be read, we can follow the arithmetic but not the vocabulary: the tablet plainly counts something in at least two different measuring systems, but what is being counted remains unknown. Cracked into several joining pieces and heavily abraded, it is one of thousands of such records from the earliest bureaucracy of the Iranian plateau, now in the Louvre.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a broken accounts sheet. It opens with a heading sign that marks the document type, then runs through a series of entries, each naming a party or a commodity and then giving its amount. Most of the figures are lost with the missing surface, but three survive: one entry of 3 units in the smaller measure, another of 1 large unit plus 2 small units and 1 fractional unit, and a third of 5 large units and 3 small ones. The rest of the lines break off before their numbers, 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 1. M157 (heading / document classifier) — 2. M217~a[?] M377 M247~c[?] M124 M377 M386~a M240 M096 x M288[?] — [ ... numerals broken away ] 3. [ ... ] M222~e x M218 — 3(N39B) 4. M029~a[?] M240[?] M096[??] [ ... ] — [ ... numerals broken away ] 5. [ ... ] — 1(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) 6. M218[?] x M096[?] — 5(N01)[?] 3(N39B) 7. M073~b[??] M242~b [ ... ] — [ ... numerals broken away ] (The remainder of the obverse is broken away; the reverse carries no inscription.)
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
M157 , M217~a# M377 M247~c# M124 M377 M386~a M240 M096 x M288# , [...] [...] M222~e x M218 , 3(N39B) M029~a# M240# M096#? [...] , [...] [...] , 1(N01) 2(N39B) 1(N24) M218# x M096# , 5(N01)# 3(N39B) M073~b#? M242~b [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4844. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009249) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.