Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5036
About this tablet
A small accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written a little after 3000 BCE in the proto-Elamite script — a writing system that is still largely undeciphered. What survives is a short ledger: a heading sign, then a handful of entries, each a commodity or category sign followed by an impressed number, closing with a larger unit that is probably a total. We can read the arithmetic perfectly well but not the words: the numerals belong to known proto-Elamite counting systems, while the signs naming what was counted remain unreadable. It is a vivid reminder that bookkeeping is legible long after language is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A short ledger, headed by a document marker, then item by item: the first commodity, 2 units; the next, 2 units of a different measure; another entry, 1 unit; the same commodity again, 1 unit; a further category whose quantity has broken away; and a final line combining 1 unit of each of three different measures. The account closes with a single large unit, most likely the total. The reverse carries no readable writing. The commodity names cannot be translated — the script has never been deciphered — but the numbers themselves are intact.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Obverse) Heading: M157~a M302~t(?) M387 M009 M264~a₁ — 2(N01) M297[?] — 2(N39B)[?] […] M263~b(?) — 1(N01) M297 — 1(N39B) M002 — [quantity lost in break] M288 — 1(N01) 1(N39B) 1(N30C) (Total / final entry:) 1(N34) (Reverse: no legible text; the surface preserves only traces of impressions and is otherwise blank or effaced.)
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
M157~a , M302~t? M387 M009 M264~a1 , 2(N01) M297# , 2(N39B)# x M263~b#? , 1(N01) M297 , 1(N39B) M002 , [...] M288 , 1(N01) 1(N39B) 1(N30C) 1(N34)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5036. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009279) — 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.