Position in chronology
MDP 26S, 5212
About this tablet
A broken accounting tablet from Susa in southwestern Iran, written in the still-undeciphered Proto-Elamite script around 3100–2900 BCE. It records quantities — impressed circles and wedges of several sizes, each standing for a different order of magnitude — booked against a repeating sign group, most likely a commodity or an account heading. Because Proto-Elamite words cannot yet be read, we can follow the numbers but not name the goods: this is bookkeeping whose arithmetic survives while its vocabulary is lost.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries are a short ledger. Under a heading written with the paired signs M106 and M288, the scribe books one unit; the following line, headed by M288 alone, records a quantity written as two large units plus five tens, with the rest broken away. The pattern then repeats: the same paired heading with one unit, and a second entry of two large units, one very large unit, five tens and four ones. A final line preserves only seven large units and five tens before the tablet breaks off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineobverse 1. [...] |M106~2+M288| , 1(N02) [...] (sign group M106~2 combined with M288) — 1 unit (N02) 2. M288 , 2(N34)# 5(N14)# [...] M288 — 2 (N34) 5 (N14) [remainder lost] 3. [|M106~2+M288|] , [1(N02)] [(sign group M106~2 combined with M288)] — [1 unit (N02)] 4. [M288] , 2(N34)# 1(N45) 5(N14) 4(N01) [M288] — 2 (N34) 1 (N45) 5 (N14) 4 (N01) 5. [...] , [...] 7(N34)# 5(N14) [...] [...] — [...] 7 (N34) 5 (N14) [remainder lost] (The tablet breaks off; no further text is preserved. Numerals marked # are damaged but legible in outline.)
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
[...] |M106~2+M288| , 1(N02) M288 , 2(N34)# 5(N14)# [...] [|M106~2+M288|] , [1(N02)] [M288] , 2(N34)# 1(N45) 5(N14) 4(N01) [...] , [...] 7(N34)# 5(N14) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Proto-Elamite (ca. 3100-2900 BC)) — MDP 26S, 5212. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P009312) — 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.