Position in chronology
ARET 03, 032
About this tablet
A fragment of a palace account from Ebla in Syria, about 2350 BCE, recording the distribution of luxury textiles — cloaks, linen, and colored belt-garments — to named officials. One recipient is Ibrium, the famous vizier of Ebla, effectively the most powerful man in the kingdom after the king. Thousands of such textile-distribution tablets survive from the Ebla archives, and together they map the court's economy and its network of favored personnel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of a clothing-issue ledger. The first legible entry notes that someone (name partly lost, ending in '-rum') took charge of, or was involved with, the goods. One fine multicolored belt-garment went to Il-damu; the next name is broken. One linen garment went to Ibrium. A full outfit — a cloak, a fine light textile, and a multicolored belt-garment — went to Saha-a. The beginning and end of the tablet are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, column i) [...]-rum, DAB₅-LU₂ (received? / PN); 1 multicolored, fine-quality ib-textile (belt-garment) with triple band: (for) Il-damu, ... -zu-[...]; (column ii) 1 linen garment: (for) Ibrium; 1 ʾadaum-cloak, 1 fine (sal-)textile, 1 multicolored ib-textile (belt-garment): (for) Saha-a; [remainder 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
[...]-rum2 DAB5-LU2 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ il-da-mu x-zu-[...] 1(asz@c) _gada_ ib-ri2-um 1(asz@c) 'a3-da-um 1(asz@c@90) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ sa-ha-a [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 032. 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 (P242212) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.