Position in chronology
ARET 03, 077
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative record from the great archives of Ebla in western Syria, written around 2350 BCE. It logs the issue of textiles — a multicolored sash and a coarse wool cloth — to named individuals, including a man connected with the city of Armi, a major trading partner and rival of Ebla. Thousands of such tablets survive from Ebla's palace, and together they map the textile-based gift economy that tied the Syrian kingdoms together. Even a broken scrap like this preserves real names and real places from one of the earliest urban archives in the world.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a torn page from Ebla's palace ledger of cloth handouts. One entry issues a fine garment and a multicolored sash to a man named Enna-Il; the next lines are lost, but the record picks up with the sa-za, the palace's central administration. Then a single piece of coarse wool cloth is issued to a man — apparently a captive or dependent — from the city of Armi, described as 'the man of ʾA-še.' The rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Column i) 1 woman(?) / fine(?) (garment), 1 multicolored ib-textile (sash) — (for) Enna-Il [...] (break) (of) the sa-za (the palace administrative center); 1 gu-mug (coarse-wool) textile — (for) the captive(?) of Armi, the man of ʾA-še(?) [...] (break)
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
1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ en-na-il [...] sa-zax(LAK384) 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ |LU2xGAN2@t| ar-mi _lu2_ 'a3-sze3 [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 077. 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 (P242262) — 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.