Position in chronology
ARET 03, 224
About this tablet
A small administrative fragment from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2350 BCE. It records luxury goods changing hands: daggers of the prized 'Amorite' type with gold-decorated blades, given to an overseer in charge of teams of kunga-equids — the donkey-onager hybrids that pulled elite war carts before horses reached the Near East. The reverse notes textiles and colored belts, standard items in Ebla's system of gifts and payments to officials. Such tablets are our main window onto the economy of one of the earliest great cities outside Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a fragment of an issue record. The palace handed out a number of Amorite-style daggers with gold-inlaid blades to a man named Bagama, the overseer of the kunga-equid teams. After a gap in the text, two men, Dulu... and Išma-damu, are noted as the ones who made the delivery. The final readable entry lists two NI-NI textiles and two multicolored belted garments; the rest of the tablet is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [n] Amorite dagger(s) with gold-inlaid blade, (for) [Ba]gama, overseer of the kunga-equid team(s). [... (break) ...] Dulu[...] (and) Išma-damu delivered (it). 2 NI-NI textiles, 2 multicolored waistbands (with) [cloth], [... (break) ...]
Our translation engine — Fable 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] _gir2# mar#-tu zu2 ku3-sig17_ [ba]-ga-ma _ugula bir3 kunga2_ [...] du-lu#[] isz-ma2-da-mu _szu mu-tag4_ 2(asz@c) TUG2-NI-NI 2(asz@c) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar# [tug2]_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 224. 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 (P242416) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.