Position in chronology
ARET 03, 013
About this tablet
A fragment of a palace ledger from Ebla in northern Syria, around 2400–2350 BCE, recording issues of clothing from the royal storehouse. Each entry names a recipient — a retainer of a man called En-buš-lim, the son of I-ti-NE, and an official named DAB₅-LU₂ who served as commissioner (maškim) under Za-ba-rúm — and specifies the standard Eblaite outfit: a heavy cloak, a lighter garment, and a coloured sash or kilt. Thousands of such textile distributions survive from Ebla's archives; together they map the court's hierarchy, since who received which cloth, and how much of it, encoded rank.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Clothing issued from the stores: to the agent of En-buš-lim, one cloak, one sal-garment, and one three-band coloured sash. Also listed is the son of I-ti-NE. And DAB₅-LU₂, acting as commissioner for Za-ba-rúm. The tablet is broken, so the quantities for the later names and the rest of the account are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineThe man (representative) of En-buš-lim: 1 gu-dùl-cloak, 1 sal-garment, 1 multicoloured íb+3 sash-kilt (of cloth). The son (male child) of I-ti-NE. DAB₅-LU₂, the commissioner (maškim) of Za-ba-rúm.
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
LU2 EN-bu3-usz-li-im 1(asz@c) _gu-dul3_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ _dumu-nita_ i-ti-NE DAB5-LU2 _maszkim_ za-ba-rum2
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 013. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Idlib, Syria (P242193) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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