Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 020
About this tablet
Three small clay fragments of a single Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Tell Beydar — ancient Nabada — in the Khabur plains of northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. What survives is a grain account: a column of personal names, each followed by a measured allotment in the gur–barig–ban capacity system. Most of the names are broken away, but Da-[x], Kur-x, x-ša-ru and En-li can still be made out. It is ordinary bookkeeping from one of the earliest literate administrations known outside southern Mesopotamia, and it shows that the cuneiform accounting system of Sumer had been fully adopted in the Syrian north.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a ration ledger, and most of it is gone. The first two lines are broken. Then the entries begin: Da-[…] receives 1 gur, 1 barig and 3 ban of grain; Kur-[…] receives 1 barig and 3 ban; a name ending in -šaru gets 1 gur plus an amount now lost; En-li gets 1 gur and 1 barig. Two further lines carry isolated signs whose meaning can no longer be recovered, and the last two entries — the names destroyed — record 1 gur each. The rest of the tablet, including the back, is broken or worn smooth.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) [...] ... [...] -ti Da-[x]: 1 (gur), 1 barig, 3 ban Kur-x: 1 barig, 3 ban [x] ša? x-ša-ru: 1 (gur), [x] En-li: 1 (gur), 1 barig SAR ... LU? [...] ... DU: 1 (gur) [...] ...: 1 (gur) (The remainder of the tablet is lost; the surviving reverse surfaces are uninscribed or wholly effaced.)
Our translation engine — Opus 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
[...] x [...] ti da#-x 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) kur x 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) [x] sza#? x-sza-ru 1(asz@c) [x] en-li 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) SAR x LU? [...] x DU 1(asz@c) [...] x 1(asz@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 020. 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 (P227199) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-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.