Position in chronology
ARET 03, 028
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative delivery record from the palace archives of Ebla in western Syria, written around 2400 BCE. It logs luxury goods — dozens of belts, metal bracelets of copper and silver, and gold objects — handed over to named individuals, including an official agent and a woman. Thousands of such tablets from Ebla document a sophisticated bureaucracy trading textiles and precious metals across Syria centuries before the better-known Mesopotamian empires.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a page from a palace ledger, now torn. Forty belts of a particular style went to the official agent in charge. After a gap, the record notes a batch of bracelets made of copper and silver, issued to a man named Zikirku from the town of Guriš. Another break follows, then an entry involving gold — the quantity is lost — and finally one woman, Lula-NI, associated with a man called Siga, and someone whose name begins Dari-, before the tablet breaks off entirely.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) 40 belts (nig2-la2) of GAB-type, (for) the agent (maškim); (Break) [N] bracelets of copper (and) silver: (for) Zikirku (of) Guriš; (Break) [...] gold; 1 woman: Lula-NI, the one of Siga, Dari-... [...] (rest broken)
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
4(u@c) _nig2-la2 GAB@t_ _maszkim_ [...] [N gu2]-li-lum _a-gar5-gar5 ku3:babbar_ zi-kir-ku gu2-ri2-isz [...] [x x] KU3-_gi_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ lu-la-NI _lu2_ si-ga da-ri2-x [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 028. 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 (P242208) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.