Position in chronology
ARET 03, 202
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written about 2350 BCE. It is a garment-issue record: sets of cloth — aktum-cloths, a gu-dul cloak, an íb-III-dar kilt — booked out to named men, among them a merchant. Names like Manuwad and Migani are typical of the Semitic-speaking population of Ebla. Records like this one, by the thousand, show how the Eblaite palace clothed its officials, traders and envoys, and they remain our best window on textile production and trade in Bronze Age Syria.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A batch of cloth is issued from the stores: so many garments and aktum-cloths, charged to Zazu and Manuwad; then further entries for Dub and for GIŠ-DUG-DU, which the damage cuts short. After a gap the account resumes with a cloak, one fine garment and one three-band kilt, issued to Migani, a merchant of the trading quarter, and then again to Manuwad, where the text breaks off. The lower half of the tablet is rubbed smooth and unreadable.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse, upper cases) [... n] garments, [n] aktum-cloths — Za-zu, Ma-nu-[wa]-ad. [...] Du-ub, GIŠ-DUG-DU, x [...] (Break — the lower half of the surface is worn away) [...] a gu-dul-cloak, 1 fine (garment), 1 íb-III-dar kilt — Mi-ga-NI, the merchant (man of the trading quarter), [Ma]-nu-[wa-ad ...]
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
[...] TUG2 [n] _aktum_ za-zu2! ma#-nu-[wa]-ad# [...] du-ub GISZ-DUG-DU x [...] [...] _gu#-dul3_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ mi-ga-NI _lu2 kar_ [ma]-nu-[wa-ad ...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 202. 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 (P242394) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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