Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 4847
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa, in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE — roughly the same moment as the earliest writing at Uruk in Mesopotamia, but in a separate script that has never been deciphered. The tablet, now reassembled from several fragments in the Louvre, lists a series of entries, each a small cluster of signs followed by a number: one, two, three units of something. We can read the arithmetic perfectly and the vocabulary not at all — a striking reminder that the world's earliest writing was invented for bookkeeping, and that some of those books remain closed.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a short ledger, and only the numbers survive as meaning. Each line pairs a commodity or personal designation — written in signs we cannot read — with a quantity: one unit, then an amount lost in a break, then two units, one unit, three units, one unit, another lost figure, and two final entries of one unit each. Several lines begin or end in damage, and the last line is gone entirely. Nothing on the reverse can be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] ... M376 — 1 (unit) M009 [...] — [...] [...] ... M371(?) ... — 2 (units) M318(?) M004 M218 M305(?) — 1 (unit) [...] — 3 (units) M230 M096 M152~d — 1 (unit) |M131+M388| M263 [...] — [...] ... M376 — 1 (unit) M352~n [...] M218 M376 — 1 (unit) [...] — [...] (The remainder is broken away; the reverse preserves no legible signs.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[...] x M376 , 1(N01) M009 [...] , [...] [...] x M371# x , 2(N01) M318# M004 M218 M305# , 1(N01) [...] , 3(N01) M230 M096 M152~d , 1(N01) |M131+M388| M263 [...] , [...] x M376 , 1(N01) M352~n [...] M218 M376 , 1(N01) [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 4847. 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 (P009252) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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