Position in chronology
ARET 03, 208
About this tablet
A broken clay tablet from the royal palace archive of Ebla in northern Syria, written in the late 24th century BCE. It is a page from the palace's textile accounts: named men — Rī-malik, Ir-ga, Du-ub — receive sets of clothing, including the standard Eblaite outfit of cloaks and a multicoloured banded kilt, together with their commissioners and couriers. Records like this show how the Ebla court dressed and rewarded its officials and the messengers who carried its business across Syria and Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
The text lists garment issues to palace personnel. Rī-malik, a commissioner, is entered as the recipient of a set of clothing — two garments and a number of multicoloured triple-banded kilts, though the quantities are broken away. Then come Ir-ga, together with his commissioner Du-ub, credited with one fine garment, and his courier, with three ʾadaum-cloaks. The tablet breaks off after this, and the rest of the account is lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(the) commissioner: Rī-malik — [he received]; [x] garments, [x] garments, [n] multicoloured triple-band kilts [...] Ir-ga and his commissioner, Du-ub; 1 fine (garment); his courier (mazalum); 3 ʾa(d)-da-um garments [...] (the remainder of the tablet is lost)
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
_maszkim#_ ri2-i3-ma-lik _[szu]-du8_ [x x] TUG2 [x x] TUG2 [n] _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar_ [...] ir3-ga wa _maszkim_-su3 du-ub 1(asz@c) _SAL_ ma-za-lum-su3 3(asz@c) 'a3-da-um [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 208. 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 (P242400) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
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.