Position in chronology
ARET 03, 266
About this tablet
A fragment of an administrative textile record from the palace archives of Ebla in Syria, written around 2400–2300 BCE. It logs the issue of garments: a fine multicoloured kilt received by one Muza, son of Guna-Malik, and a bale of coarse cloth connected with a man named Du-NI-dum. The Ebla archives — thousands of such tablets — reveal a sophisticated bureaucracy tracking wool and cloth, the kingdom's chief wealth, and this scrap is one page of that ledger.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a torn page from a clothing-issue register. The readable part says that Muza, son of Guna-Malik, received a fine multicoloured kilt of the standard palace type; the beginning of the entry, with the quantity, is lost. A second entry records one bale of coarse, low-grade cloth for a man named Du-NI-dum, but the rest of that entry — and whatever followed — is broken away.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[...] [x] íb-III kilt(s), multicoloured, of fine quality — Muza, the son of Guna-Malik, [...] received (them). 1 (bale of) gu-mug (coarse cloth) — Du-NI-dum [...] (remainder broken)
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
[...] _|IB2+3(DISZ@t)| dar sa6 tug2_ mu-za _dumu-nita_ gu2-na-ma-lik [...] _szu ba4-ti_ 1(asz@c) _gu-mug_ du-NI-dum [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — ARET 03, 266. 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 (P242459) — 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.