Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5045
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script. Each line pairs a group of word-signs — probably the name of a person, an institution or a commodity — with a numerical notation impressed in a system of circles and wedges, and the tablet closes with a total of twelve units. Because Proto-Elamite word-signs cannot yet be read, we can follow the bookkeeping perfectly well while remaining ignorant of exactly what was being counted. It is one of thousands of such ledgers from the earliest bureaucratic archives of Iran, 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 ledger, and only the numbers survive intelligibly. The first entry, whose heading is broken away, is credited with one unit plus a smaller fractional measure. A second entry, marked by a doubled sign and one other, receives one unit. Three further entries have lost their figures entirely to damage. Another account, ending in a sign group that is only partly legible, is likewise set at one unit; so is the entry headed by the compound sign and its two companions. The last line, headed by a single sign, records twelve units — most likely the total of the account.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) […] — 1 (unit N01), 1 (unit N24) M318~a1 M318~a1 M371 — 1 (unit N01) M377 […] — […] […] … M347 M371 […] — […] […] … M377~e … […] — […] […] … M057~a — 1 (unit N01) M219 M338~b […] — […] […] … |M131+M388| M101 M066 — 1 (unit N01) M388 — 1 (N14) 2 (N01) [= 12 units] (No inscribed text preserved on the reverse or edges.)
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
[...] , 1(N01) 1(N24) M318~a1 M318~a1 M371 , 1(N01) M377# [...] , [...] [...] x M347 M371# [...] , [...] [...] x M377~e x [...] , [...] [...] x M057~a# , 1(N01) M219 M338~b# [...] , [...] [...] x |M131+M388| M101 M066 , 1(N01) M388 , 1(N14) 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5045. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009288) — 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.