Position in chronology
ARET 03, 250
About this tablet
A small administrative fragment from the palace archives of Ebla in Syria, written around 2350 BCE. It records the handing over of a luxury set — a fine robe, a linen garment, and two silver toggle-pins with gold heads — as a gift connected with the queen mother, the 'mother of the king.' One of the men named is Ibrium, the powerful vizier of Ebla, which places this scrap of accounting at the very top of the court. Thousands of such textile records survive from Ebla, together forming the earliest large archive of any Syrian state.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a delivery note from the palace: [someone]-Damu and Ibrium handed over goods to the king's mother. The consignment was one ceremonial zara-robe, one linen garment, and two silver dress-pins weighing a third of a mina, each pin topped with a gold head. The record labels the whole set as a gift. The tablet breaks off there, so we do not know what else the entry listed or the occasion for the present.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(fragment; beginning lost) [...]-Damu, Ibrium: to the mother of the king (the queen mother) he delivered (it). 1 zara₆-robe, 1 linen garment, 2 toggle-pins of one-third (mina) of silver, their 2 heads of gold — a gift [... (remainder broken)]
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
[x]-x-da#-mu ib-ri2-um AMA-_gal en_ _szu mu-tag4_ 1(asz@c) _zara6_ 1(asz@c) _gada_ 2(asz@c) bu-DI |SZU2+SZA| _ku3:babbar_ 2(asz@c) _sag_-su3!(BU) _ku3-sig17_ _nig2#-ba_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 250. 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 (P242443) — 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.