Position in chronology
ARET 03, 233
About this tablet
A fragment of a textile-account tablet from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. The scribes there tracked enormous quantities of cloth — garments issued to named individuals, sometimes alongside precious objects like this gold item — and closed each account with a grand total, here over a thousand textiles. Though badly broken, the tablet is a witness to Ebla's role as a major textile power of the Early Bronze Age, whose archive of thousands of tablets was preserved when the palace burned.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ledger entry from a clothing warehouse. One zara6-cloth and one fine multicoloured kilt, plus a gold ASAR-object, are booked out to a man named Gara-inu. The next lines are broken; another recipient, NI-da-KUL, appears, but what he received is lost. After a further gap the account resumes with garments, including 36 multicoloured kilts, and then the bottom line: a grand total of 1,074 textiles processed in this account. The rest of the tablet is destroyed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 zara6-textile, 1 fine multicoloured kilt (íb+III garment); 1 ASAR-object of gold: (for) Gara-inu. (Break) NI-da-KUL ... (Break) [...] garments; 36 multicoloured kilts (íb+n garments). Total: 1,074 textiles.
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
1(asz@c) _zara6_ 1(asz@c@90) _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ 1(asz@c) ASAR _ku3-sig17_ ga-ra-i-nu [...] NI-da-KUL# [...] [...] TUG2 3(u@c) 6(asz@c) _|IB2+n(DISZ@t)|# dar tug2 szu-nigin2_ 1(u@c) mi-at 1(gesz2@c) 1(u@c) 4(asz@c) _tug2-tug2_
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 233. 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 (P242425) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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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.