Position in chronology
ARET 03, 201
About this tablet
A fragment of a palace ledger from Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2350 BCE. Ebla's administrators kept meticulous track of the textiles issued from the royal stores, and this tablet lists a handful of men — En-gamu-du, Ibazinu, Ii-bu, Dubi-šum, Dubi-zikir and others — each set against the standard Eblaite outfit of three garments: an ʾàdaum cloak, an aktum cloth, and a coloured kilt-like ib₃ garment with three bands. One entry is marked as formally 'handed over', and boxwood appears among the goods. It is the routine bookkeeping of a Bronze Age court wardrobe, and one of thousands of such tablets from the burnt palace archive of Tell Mardikh.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The list names several men — En-gamu-du, Ibazinu, Ii-bu, Dubi-šum, and one whose name is broken, perhaps Manuwad. Against them is entered a standard clothing allotment: one ʾàdaum cloak, one aktum cloth, and one coloured three-band ib₃ garment, with Ar-si-[...] recorded as having made the delivery. Then comes an entry for boxwood, followed by one fine garment and another coloured three-band garment issued to Dubi-zikir. The tablet breaks off after that.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineEn-ga-mu-du, I-ba-zi-nu, I-i-bu₃, Du-bi₂-šum, [...] [Ma-nu]-wa?-ad: 1 ʾà-da-um garment, 1 aktum garment, 1 multicoloured ib₃-III fine garment — Ar-si-[...] has [de]livered (lit. "caused the hand to touch"). Boxwood (taskarin). 1 fine (garment), 1 multicoloured ib₃-III garment — Du-bi₂-zi-kir. [...] (The remainder of the tablet is broken away.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
EN#-ga-mu-du i-ba-zi-nu i-i-bu3 du-bi2-szum [...] [ma-nu]-wa?-ad 1(asz@c) 'a3-da-um 1(asz@c@90) _aktum_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ ar-si-[...] _szu# [mu]-tag4#_ TASKARIN 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ du-bi2-zi-kir [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 201. 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 (P242393) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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