Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5055
About this tablet
A proto-Elamite accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written around 3100–2900 BCE in a script that has never been deciphered. Each line pairs a short group of signs — presumably a person, household, or commodity — with a number: mostly small counts of three, two or one unit, and in one entry a larger figure. The tablet survives only as a battered fragment, photographed here from six sides, and its numerals are the only part of it we can read with confidence. It belongs to one of the earliest bureaucracies on earth, a system of tallies kept a few generations after writing itself was invented.
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 its arithmetic still speaks. Line by line it names something — a person, a household, a kind of goods, we cannot say which — and sets a figure beside it: three, two, three again, one of a larger unit, then three, three, two. Several entries are broken away entirely, their quantities lost with the missing clay. The sign groups themselves remain unreadable, because the proto-Elamite script has never been cracked; what we have is the shape of an account without its vocabulary.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 1. M250~a, M315[?], (one illegible sign) — 3(N01) 2. M250~a, M131, M262, M218 — 2(N01)[?] 3. (illegible sign) [...] — [quantity lost] 4. [...] M347[?], (one illegible sign), M223 — 1(N14) 5. M054[?], M004, M066 — 3(N01) 6. M262, |M106+M288|, M066 — 2(N01)[?] 7. [...] M388[?], M066[?], M066[?], (one illegible sign), M057[?] — 1(N01)[?] 8. M371[?], M332[?], M131, M263, (one illegible sign) — 1(N01)[?] 9. [...] (one illegible sign), M096[?] — 3(N01) 10. M390, M262[?], M096[?] — 3(N01) 11. (two illegible signs) [...] — [quantity lost] 12. [...] M390, M004, M218 — 2(N01) (The remainder of the surface, and the reverse as preserved, carry no legible signs.)
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
M250~a M315# x , 3(N01) M250~a M131 M262 M218 , 2(N01)# x [...] , [...] [...] M347# x M223 , 1(N14) M054# M004 M066 , 3(N01) M262 |M106+M288| M066 , 2(N01)# [...] M388#? M066# M066# x M057# , 1(N01)#? M371# M332# M131 M263 x , 1(N01)# [...] x M096#? , 3(N01) M390 M262#? M096#? , 3(N01) x x [...] , [...] [...] M390 M004 M218 , 2(N01)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5055. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009552) — 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.