Position in chronology
ARET 03, 014
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2350 BCE in the local Semitic-flavoured cuneiform of that city. It is a piece of the palace's cloth accounting: garments issued to named men, including an overseer of the district of Ib'al and an official responsible for sesame-oil offerings. Ebla's scribes tracked textiles obsessively — cloth was the city's currency of gift, salary and diplomacy — and even a fragment like this preserves the names and job titles of real Eblaite officials.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The surviving entries list clothing handed out by the palace. Agalim, the overseer of Ib'al, appears in connection with a delivery; the next lines are lost. Then one dul-cloak is assigned to Idadmu, the officer in charge of the sesame-oil offering. After another break, a further entry records nine (ten minus one) aktum-garments, but the name of the recipient and the rest of the account are broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineA-ga-li-im, overseer of Ib-al[…], …-mu-[DU] (delivery). […] 1 dul-garment: I-da-ad-mu, the man of the food-offering of sesame oil. […] [… …] … [… …] … [10] minus 1 (= 9) aktum-garments […]
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
a-ga-li-im _ugula_ ib-al6[] _HI-mu-[DU]_ [...] 1(asz@c) _dul3_ i-da-ad-mu _lu2 nidba2 i3-gesz_ [...] [x x] x [x x] x [1(u@c)] _la2_ 1(disz@t) _aktum_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 014. 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 (P242194) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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