Position in chronology
ARET 03, 153
About this tablet
A fragment of a textile-distribution record from the palace archives of Ebla in western Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. The scribe logs garments handed out to named individuals: a cheap coarse cloth and a multicoloured kilt for one man, and a fine multicoloured kilt for another, Dubi-zikir, identified as the agent or dependent of a third person whose name is broken away. Thousands of such tablets survive from Ebla and together they map the wool economy and social hierarchy of one of the earliest great Syrian cities — the quality of the cloth you received signalled exactly where you stood.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an issue slip from the Ebla clothing office. One low-grade coarse-fibre wrap and one multicoloured kilt go to a man named Igbul; a line follows with an administrative notation and what may be the name Rasap, but the entry is damaged. Then a second issue: one fine multicoloured kilt for Dubi-zikir, who works for a man whose name — Irig-something — breaks off at the edge of the tablet. The rest of the document is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 coarse gu-mug textile, of poor quality; 1 multicoloured íb+III kilt — (for) Igbul, PAP-GAR [...] Rasap; 1 fine multicoloured íb+III kilt — (for) Dubi-zikir, the man of Irig-[...].
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) _gu-mug 1(disz@t) hul_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ ig-bu3-ul PAP-GAR [...] ra-sa-ap 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ du-bi2-zi-kir _lu2_ i-ri2-ig-[...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 153. 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 (P242345) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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