Position in chronology
ARET 03, 252
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative account from the palace archives of Ebla in northern Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. It lists named individuals — Wabarum, Dubi, Durium, Irig-ze, Iti-agu, Zabarum — receiving or handling quantities of wool, including fifteen standard wool-measures given as a purchase price connected with the 'great mother', likely the queen mother of the Eblaite court. Such texts, thousands of which were found in the burnt palace archive of Tell Mardikh, document the wool-based economy at the heart of Ebla's power. This piece is too broken to reconstruct the full transaction, but the surviving entries show the everyday flow of textiles among court personnel.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
What survives reads like a page from a textile ledger. Wabarum received goods — what exactly is lost in the break. Then comes a list of names: Dubi, Durium, Irig-ze, and Iti-agu, the last identified as somebody's brother, though the name is broken away. After another gap, an entry for Zabarum: fifteen standard measures of wool, booked as a purchase price, in connection with the 'great mother' — probably the queen mother of the palace. The rest of the tablet is broken off.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(column i) Wabarum received. (Break) (column ii) Dubi, Durium, Irig-ze, Iti-agu, brother of [...] (Break) (column iii) Zabarum: 15 kin-measures of wool, as the purchase price, (for) the great mother (the queen mother). (Break)
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
wa-ba-rum2# _szu ba4#-[ti]_ [...] du-bi2 du-ri2-um i-ri2-ig-ze2 i-ti-a-gu2 _szesz_ [x] [...] za-ba-rum2 1(u@c) 5(asz@c) KIN SIKI NIG2-_sa10-nig2-sa10_ AMA-_gal_ [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 252. 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 (P242445) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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