Position in chronology
ARET 03, 210
About this tablet
A clay tablet from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written about 2350 BCE — one of thousands of administrative records found at Tell Mardikh. It logs issues of clothing from the palace stores: multicoloured cloths, gu-dul garments and other textiles handed out to named men, including one associated with Abarsal, a rival city with which Ebla famously concluded a treaty. Each entry names a recipient and, in one case, the 'commissioner' (maškim) responsible for the transaction. Textiles were Ebla's chief wealth, and lists like this are the ledgers of that trade.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Issue of garments, Abarsal account. One ib-garment of multicoloured cloth (three units) to Irig. To Dur-NE-du: one gu-dul garment, one fine garment, and one multicoloured ib-garment. The next entries are lost. After the gap: one multicoloured ib-garment of good quality for Idamu, the DAB-LU official, with Zabarum acting as commissioner. Then one NI-NI textile and a further quantity of ib-garments, before the tablet breaks off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(Text of) Abarsal: 1 ib-garment (with 3 units), multicoloured cloth — (for) I-ri-ig; (for) Dur-NE-du: 1 gu-dul garment, 1 fine (SAL) garment, 1 ib-garment (with 3 units), multicoloured cloth. (Break) [...] 1 ib-garment (with 3 units), multicoloured, fine cloth — (for) I-da-mu, the DAB-LU official; commissioner (maškim): Za-ba-rum. 1 NI-NI textile, [n] ib-garment(s) (with n units) [...] (Remainder broken)
Our translation engine — Opus 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
a-bar-sal4 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ i-ri2-ig dur-NE-du 1(asz@c) _gu-dul3_ 1(asz@c) _SAL_ 1(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ [...] [...]1 _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ i-da-mu DAB5-LU2 _maszkim_ za-ba-rum2 1(asz@c) TUG2-NI-NI [n] _|IB2+n(DISZ@t)|#_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 210. 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 (P242402) — 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.