Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5197
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 sign — a commodity, a person, or an institution — with a number impressed in the round-and-wedge numeral system that we *can* read. It is bookkeeping: someone in a Susa storehouse was tallying at least fifteen separate allotments, several of them in tens. The words are lost to us, but the arithmetic survives, which is a fair description of the earliest writing in Iran generally.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger page. Line after line it sets down a heading and a figure: eight units against one category, five against another, nine plus a fractional measure against a third, six here, one there, and twice a larger round unit (ten) followed by a single unit. One entry carries a compound heading — possibly a subtotal or a document label — but its figure is broken away. The first line and several others are damaged past reading, and the last two entries survive only as a stroke and a trace. The back of the tablet carries nothing legible.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse — accounting entries; each line: commodity/recipient designation, then quantity) […] — 5 (N01) [damaged] M009 — 8 (N01) M376 — 1 (N14) [damaged] […] […] — 9 (N01) [damaged], 1 (N08A) M270~c, M009 [damaged] — 5 (N01) M387~c [damaged], M005~a, M032 — 1 (N01) |M157+M381| […] — […] […] — 9 (N01) M112~c — 2 (N30C) M009 [damaged] — 6 (N01) M032 — 1 (N01) M292~f — 1 (N14) [damaged], 1 (N01) […] — 1 (N14) [damaged], 1 (N01) (unread sign) — 1 (N01) [damaged] (unread sign) […] — […] (reverse — surface preserved but uninscribed/effaced; no signs legible)
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.
Engine notes
read from photo9 uncertain terms ↓
- M009 — Unidentified proto-cuneiform sign; appears multiple times as a commodity or category heading. Exact referent (grain type, institution, product) not established for Susa corpus at this period.
- M376 — Unidentified proto-cuneiform sign; commodity or institutional reference unclear.
- M270~c — Variant of sign M270; the '~c' indicates a specific graphemic sub-type. Meaning not resolved.
- M387~c, M005~a, M032 — A combination of three signs in one entry; whether this is a compound sign, a title, or a list of three separate items is not clear.
- |M157+M381| — A compound (ligature) sign; M157 alone is an unidentified heading/category sign at Susa. The compound's meaning is unresolved.
- M112~c — Variant of sign M112; commodity or referent unknown in this Susa context.
- M292~f — Variant of sign M292; meaning uncertain.
- N30C — Large impressed circular numeral; its precise value is context-dependent and not fully resolved for this tablet's metrological system.
- 1(N14) — Higher-order numerical unit; in sexagesimal contexts conventionally = 10× N01, but actual value depends on commodity system in use (grain, area, capacity, etc.) — not determinable here.
Reasoning ↓
Visually, the photo shows a heavily fragmented tablet reassembled from multiple pieces, displayed alongside detached edge/rim fragments and what appears to be the reverse or a separate fragment below. The obverse surface (upper composite image) preserves clearly impressed numerical signs — round deep impressions (N01-type) and larger circular impressions (N14/N30C-type) — arranged in rows separated by horizontal rulings, consistent with a proto-cuneiform or proto-Elamite administrative format from Susa. Several pictographic/logographic signs are visible in the upper and middle registers, including what appear to be the characteristic incised outlines of proto-cuneiform commodity signs, but surface erosion, cracks running diagonally across the face, and the fragmentary state make individual sign identification at this resolution unreliable. The right-side edge fragment bears a museum number (Sb 15364) in modern ink, confirming Louvre catalog identity. The lower fragment in the photograph appears to be either the reverse or a non-joining fragment; it bears modern red ink notations and is largely uninscribed or too eroded to read. The transliteration provided uses CDLI proto-cuneiform sign nomenclature (M-numbers and N-numbers), which cannot be individually verified from the photo at this resolution — I can confirm the general layout of numerical entries against commodity signs, but I cannot cross-check specific M-number identifications. No standard transliteration disagreements are detectable, but many signs marked '#' (damaged) and '[...]' (broken) in the transliteration correspond visually to areas of clear surface loss or crack interference. This is a transliteration-supported reading with partial visual confirmation only.
Generated by Claude Sonnet 4.6 · prompt 2026-05-12/v4-interpretation · May 16, 2026 · 1939 in / 1226 out tokens
Transliteration
[...] , 5(N01)# M009 , 8(N01) M376 , 1(N14)# [...] [...] , 9(N01)# 1(N08A) M270~c M009# , 5(N01) M387~c# M005~a M032 , 1(N01) |M157+M381| [...] , [...] [...] , 9(N01) M112~c , 2(N30C) M009# , 6(N01) M032 , 1(N01) M292~f , 1(N14)# 1(N01) [...] , 1(N14)# 1(N01) x , 1(N01)# x [...] , [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5197. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009297) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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.