Position in chronology
ARET 03, 120
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative textile account from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. The surviving line counts out garments by type — heavy cloaks, standard outer garments, and dozens of fine textiles — the stock-in-trade of Ebla's famous cloth economy. Textiles were Ebla's chief export and diplomatic currency, and thousands of tablets like this one tracked their movement through the palace. Only a sliver of the original record survives.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a scrap of a warehouse ledger. What remains of the entry reads roughly: twenty-one heavy cloaks together with type-one overgarments, one NI&NI textile, sixty-seven fine garments, and fourteen of something else — the item name is broken away. Whatever came before and after this line is lost; the rest of the tablet's surface is blank or destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] 21(?) gu-dul cloaks (and) 'a-da-um garments of type I; 1 NI&NI-textile; 67 fine (SAL) garments; 14(?) [...]
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
[x] 2(u@c)#? 1(asz@c)#? _gu-dul3_ 'a3-da-um 1(disz@t) 1(asz@c) TUG2-|NI&NI| 1(gesz2@c) 7(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(u@c) 4(asz@c)#? [x]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 120. This record has no stored scholarly English translation; the existence of published translations has not been checked; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Idlib, Syria (P242308) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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