Position in chronology
ARET 03, 055
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative record from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, about 2400–2300 BCE. It logs distributions of the standard Ebla clothing set — an outer cloak, a tunic, and a multicolored sash — to named individuals, including a man called Iram-malik, his brother, and a 'man of the quay,' probably a merchant. Thousands of such textile-disbursement tablets survive from Ebla, and together they map the social network of one of the earliest great trading kingdoms outside Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Clothing issue record: one cloak, one tunic, and one fine multicolored sash went to a recipient whose name is broken away; another set — a textile and a multicolored sash — went to a merchant ('man of the quay'). Iram-malik received a cloak and a tunic. A further entry mentions gold given to 'his brother,' and a final line beginning 'two...' breaks off. Several passages in between are too damaged to read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 'a-da-um cloak, 1 aktum-tunic, 1 fine multicolored íb-sash (íb-III quality), [...] ... his ..., the man of the quay (merchant), 1 fine(?) textile (SAL), 1 multicolored íb-sash, ... ... [...] 1 'a-da-um cloak, 1 aktum-tunic: (for) Iram-malik, ... ... [...] [...] gold, his brother, 2 [...] (Break)
Our translation engine — Fable 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
1(asz@c) 'a3-da-um 1(asz@c@90) _aktum_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ [...] x-su3 _lu2 kar_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ x x [...] 1(asz@c) 'a3#-da#-um# 1(asz@c) _aktum_ ir3-am6-ma-lik x x [...] [...] _ku3-sig17_ _szesz_-su3 2(asz@c) [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 055. 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 (P242240) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.