Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 049
About this tablet
A small pillow-shaped accounting tablet from Tell Beydar in northeastern Syria — ancient Nabada — written around 2400 BCE. It totals three kinds of grain held or delivered by the farmer: 5,400 units of barley, 1,240 of a finer grade, and 1,240 of emmer wheat. What makes it striking is the arithmetic itself: the scribe writes the numbers with the Semitic words for 'thousand' (li-im) and 'hundred' (mi-at) rather than pure Sumerian notation, evidence that this northern city ran its granaries in a Semitic language while borrowing the Sumerian writing system. The modern ink marks on the lower edge are the excavation number from the 1990s Belgian-Syrian dig.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain account, charged to the farmer: barley — 5,400; fine-grade grain — 1,240; emmer wheat — 1,240. Nothing more is written; the back of the tablet was left blank.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineFrom the farmer (engar): Barley: 5 thousand, 4 hundred (= 5,400). Fine-quality grain (sig15): 1 thousand, 2 hundred, 40 (= 1,240). Emmer: 1 thousand, 2 hundred, 40 (= 1,240). (The reverse is uninscribed.)
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
ki engar sze 5(asz@c) li-im 4(asz@c) mi-at sig15 1(asz@c) li-im 2(asz@c) mi-at 4(u@c) ziz2 1(asz@c) li-im 2(asz@c) mi-at 4(u@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 049. 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, Der-ez-Zor, Syria (P227228) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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