Position in chronology
ARET 03, 016
About this tablet
A fragment of a palace ledger from Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh in northwestern Syria), written around 2350–2300 BCE in the archive of Palace G. It records issues of cloth and garments from the royal stores: two named men acknowledge receipt, and a further entry lists a multicoloured belt-kilt and a piece of coarse-wool cloth against the name Ri-ga-zi. Textiles were Ebla's principal wealth and its main diplomatic currency, and thousands of tablets like this one — baked hard when the palace burned — track every bolt of cloth that left the storehouse.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Sa-du-ur signed for his allocation; a second man, whose name is broken, signed for his. The itemised list that follows covers two SAL-textiles and one three-panel multicoloured kilt, plus one bolt of coarse gu-mug cloth charged to Ri-ga-zi. The rest of the tablet is lost, so we cannot see the totals or the official who authorised the issue.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineSa-[du]-ur: he received. [...]-da-[...]: he received. 2 SAL(-textiles), 1 íb-III multicoloured garment (kilt) [...] 1 gu-mug garment — Ri-ga-zi [...] (The remainder of the tablet is broken away; the surviving surface preserves only these entries.)
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.
Transliteration
sa-[du]-ur2# _szu ba4-ti_ [x]-da-[...] _szu ba4-ti_ 2(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ [...] 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ ri2-ga-zi [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 016. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Idlib, Syria (P242196) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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