Position in chronology
ARET 03, 146
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative textile account from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. It records an issue of garments — cloaks, tunics, a coarse cloth, a fine cloth, and a multicoloured kilt — received by the maliktum, the queen of Ebla, plus a piece of linen. Thousands of such tablets from Ebla document how the palace distributed textiles, its chief manufactured wealth, to royalty, officials, and foreign dignitaries; here we glimpse the queen herself drawing on the palace stores.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a palace stock-issue slip. Several double-style ʾa-da-um cloaks and at least two aktum tunics (the exact numbers are broken away), plus one coarse-grade cloth, one fine cloth, and one multicoloured kilt, were handed over — the queen received them. A further line records one piece of linen of a particular type, but the tablet breaks off there and the rest is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [n] ʾa-da-um cloaks of double (format), [n +] 2 aktum-tunics [...], 1 coarse gu-mug textile, 1 fine(-quality) textile, 1 multicoloured kilt (íb-III garment): the queen (maliktum) received. 1 linen cloth, TAR-TAR [...] (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
[n] 'a3-da-um 2(disz@t) [n] 2(asz@c) _aktum_ [...] 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ ma-lik-tum _szu ba4-ti_ 1(asz@c) _gada_ TAR-TAR [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 146. 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 (P242334) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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