Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5008
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written about 3100–2900 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — one of the world's earliest writing systems, and one still largely undeciphered. What can be read with certainty are the numbers: entries of 10, 3, 1, 1, 14, 2, 34, 1 and 1, each attached to a sign or group of signs that presumably names a commodity, a person, or an institutional household. The sign M153 recurs several times as a heading, suggesting repeated allocations of the same category of goods. The tablet is broken and eroded at the top, so the opening entries and any total are lost; it survives today 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 ledger. The first lines are broken away. What remains reads like a column of tallies: against the sign M153, ten units; against M244, three; two damaged entries follow that cannot be read; M153 again, one; then a group of four signs (M110, probably M242, M096, and one more that is illegible) with one unit; M153 again, fourteen; an unreadable sign with two; a variant of M153 with thirty-four; M387~l together with M288, one; and M387~a, one. The reverse carries no further writing. Whatever these goods were, the scribe was counting them by tens and ones, and the largest single figure preserved is thirty-four.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, column of entries) [...] , [...] M153 , 1(N14) — 10 M244 , 3(N01) — 3 [two unread signs] [...] , [...] [...] , [...] M153 , 1(N01) — 1 M110~a M242~b(?) M096 [unread sign] , 1(N01) — 1 M153 , 1(N14) 4(N01) — 14 [unread sign] , 2(N01) — 2 M153~a , 3(N14) 4(N01) — 34 M387~l M288 , 1(N01) — 1 M387~a , 1(N01) — 1 (reverse: uninscribed apart from the ruled entries at the left edge; no further text preserved)
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
[...] , [...] M153# , 1(N14) M244 , 3(N01) x x [...] , [...] [...] , [...] M153# , 1(N01) M110~a M242~b?! M096# x , 1(N01)# M153# , 1(N14) 4(N01) x , 2(N01) M153~a , 3(N14) 4(N01) M387~l M288 , 1(N01) M387~a , 1(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5008. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009255) — 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.