Position in chronology
ARET 03, 072
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative textile account from the palace archives of Ebla in northwestern Syria, written around 2350 BCE. It records small allotments of garments — coarse cloth, a multicolored belt, and cloaks — issued to named individuals, including a commissioner and two men connected with the town of Manuwad. Thousands of such records survive from Ebla, and together they map the flow of textiles, the city's signature product, through its bureaucracy and out to allies and dependents across Syria.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a clothing-issue record. Under the heading of Sa-nab-zugum, one coarse-weave garment and one multicolored triple belt went to Ennu-LUM, the commissioner. A man whose name is partly broken away — something ending in '-lu' — is listed next; then three cloaks went to Azi of the town of Manuwad, and one coarse-weave garment went to Aduna, also of Manuwad. Essentially a warehouse chit noting who received which pieces of clothing from the palace stores.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineSa-nab-zugum: 1 gu-mug textile (coarse-fiber garment), 1 triple(-banded) multicolored belt-garment — Ennu-LUM, the commissioner; [...]-lu: 3 dul-garments (cloaks) — Azi of Manuwad; 1 gu-mug textile (coarse-fiber garment) — Aduna of Manuwad.
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
sa-[nab]-zu-gum2 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ en-nu-LUM _maszkim_ [x x]-lu 3(asz@c) _gu-dul3_ a-zi ma-nu-wa-ad 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ a-du-na ma-nu#-wa-ad#[]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 072. 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 (P242257) — 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.