Position in chronology
ARET 03, 213
About this tablet
A fragment of a textile-distribution record from the royal palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, around 2400–2350 BCE. Palace scribes tracked cloth issued to named individuals — here a set of cloaks and multicoloured kilts going to men including one identified as a merchant, a 'man of the quay.' Thousands of such tablets from Ebla document a court that clothed its officials, envoys and trading agents as a matter of routine, and they are among our earliest windows onto Syrian palace economy.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Clothing issued from the palace stores: a quantity of garments and multicoloured kilts, assigned to GIŠ-DUG-DU and to Ra'āg. The next entry is lost. Then a man whose name ends in -zikir, described as a merchant of the quay. Finally, two double-format ʾà-da-um cloaks and two multicoloured kilts for A-a-iš-ru…, whose entry breaks off with the edge of the tablet.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[N ...-NI garments], [n] multicoloured íb-III kilts — GIŠ-DUG-DU; Ra'āg (ra-ʾà-ag); […] (line lost); […]-zikir, the man of the quay (merchant); 2 ʾà-da-um cloaks of the second type, 2 multicoloured íb-III kilts — A-a-iš-ru… […] (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
[N TUG2-NI]-NI [n] _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ GISZ-DUG-DU ra-'a3-ag [...] [x]-x-zi-kir _lu2 kar_ 2(asz@c) 'a3-da-um 2(asz@c@90) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar tug2_ a-a-isz#?-ru12#? [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 213. 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 (P242405) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
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.