Position in chronology
ARET 03, 246
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative account from the palace archives of Ebla in western Syria, around 2400–2300 BCE — one of the oldest bureaucratic archives ever found. It records valuables passing through the palace stores: silver-decorated 'Amorite-style' daggers and hundreds of textiles of different grades, likely issued as gifts or distributed to personnel. Such lists show Ebla as a major hub of the Bronze Age textile and metal trade, moving goods in the hundreds at a time.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a stores ledger, badly broken but still legible in parts. It logs one Martu-style dagger (details lost) connected with a person whose name is only partly preserved, then a second Martu dagger of the game'u type, worked in silver. After a gap, the tally turns to cloth: some hundreds and thirty-eight aktum garments, twenty-eight heavy gu-dul cloaks (with a single 'ada item noted), and one hundred thirty-eight fine garments. The beginning and end of the account are lost.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 Martu dagger ... [...] I-[x]-da-[x] (personal name, broken) 1 Martu dagger, game'u-type, of silver [... break ...] [n] hundred forty less 2 (= [n]38) aktum-garments, thirty less 2 (= 28) gu-dul cloaks, 'ada: 1, 1 hundred forty less 2 (= 138) fine [garments ...]
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) _gir2# [mar-tu]_ ti#? [...] i-[x]-da-[x] 1(asz@c) _gir2_ [mar]-tu# ga-me-u3 _ku3:babbar_ [...] [n] mi-at 4(u@c) _la2_ 2(asz@c) _aktum_ 3(u@c) _la2_ 2(asz@c) _gu-dul3_ 'a3-da 1(disz@t) 1(asz@c) mi-at 4(u@c)# _la2_ 2(asz@c) _SAL_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 246. 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 (P242439) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-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.