Position in chronology
ARET 03, 195
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative textile account from the palace archives of Ebla in western Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. It records issues of garments — kilts, fine woven cloths, women's robes — to named individuals, including a son of the king. Thousands of such tablets from Ebla document how the royal court used textiles as payment, gift, and diplomatic currency, making cloth one of the great engines of this Bronze Age economy.
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 palace clothing ledger. One surviving entry issues a guzi-garment and a NI-NI cloth, plus a multicoloured triple-band kilt, to a son of the king. After a break, another entry gives a man named Ḫara-il one guzi-garment, one zara-robe, and one fine multicoloured kilt. The beginning and end of the account are lost, so we don't know the occasion for these handouts or how many other recipients were listed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Fragment; beginning lost) [...] a guzi-garment, 1 NI-NI textile, 1 multicoloured kilt (of triple quality) (for) the son of the king [... Break ...] Ḫara-il: 1 guzi-garment, 1 zara-garment, 1 fine multicoloured kilt [...] (remainder lost)
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
[...] gu-zi 1(asz@c) TUG2-NI-NI 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ DUMU-_nita en_ [...] ha-ra-il 1(asz@c) gu-zi 1(asz@c) _zara6_ 1(asz@c) _ib2 sa6 dar_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 195. 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 (P242388) — 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.