Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 008
About this tablet
An Early Dynastic administrative account from Tell Beydar (ancient Nabada, in the kingdom of Nagar) in northern Syria, from roughly the mid-third millennium BCE. It is a running ledger: a scribe lists named individuals — Tab-la-a-lim, Ar-szi-a-hu, Kur-i3-lum and others — each followed by a substantial quantity (in the dozens) and the note that the goods 'were weighed out' (or remained as an outstanding balance). Tablets like this, from one of the earliest literate centers outside southern Mesopotamia, show Sumerian bookkeeping conventions being used to manage a Syrian town's economy, with local Semitic personal names.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is an account sheet listing disbursements against named people. The first entry, involving someone's wife, is too damaged to read, but the tally continues: 54 (or so) units weighed out to HAL-ti; 50 to Tab-la-a-lim; an entry now lost in a break, also weighed out; 47 to Ar-szi-a-hu; and 24 (or so) to Kur-i3-lum. After each name and figure the clerk repeats the same formula — 'weighed out' — like ticking off a checklist. The end of the tablet is broken away, so we don't know what commodity was being distributed or whether more names followed.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) The wife(?) [...] [...] [...] were weighed out. HAL-ti: 54(?) [...] were weighed out. Tab-la-a-lim: 50 [...] [were weighed out.] (Break) were weighed out. Ar-szi-a-hu: 47 were weighed out. Kur-i3-lum: 24(?) [...] (Break — remainder lost)
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
dam# [x x] x [x] ba-la2 HAL-ti 5(u@c) 4(asz@c)#? [x] ba-la2# tab-la#-[a-lim] 5(u@c) [x] [ba-la2] [...] ba-la2 ar-szi-a-hu 4(u@c) 7(asz@c) ba#-la2 kur#-i3#-lum 2(u@c) 4(asz@c)#? [x] [...]
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 008. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: National Museum of Syria, Der-ez-Zor, Syria (P227187) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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.