Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 052
About this tablet
A small, palm-sized clay tablet from Tell Beydar in northeastern Syria — ancient Nabada — written about 2400 BCE, in the age of the Ebla archives. It is an administrative tally organized by the gates of the town: each entry names a gate (identified by the man in charge of it, such as Beli-ZI or AN-GAR-kas₄) and gives a figure — 29, 26, 62, 62, 18, 30. Beydar's scribes routinely tracked barley, workers, and animals gate by gate, since the gates were the checkpoints where goods entered and left the settlement. The tablet is pierced with a hole, suggesting it was strung and hung as a label or filed on a cord in the palace archive.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
A gate-by-gate count from the town administration. Under the heading concerning the men (the opening words are damaged), the scribe lists: Beli-ZI's gate, 29; AN-GAR-kas₄'s gate, 26; the gate of […]-belim, 62; the gate of Ga-…-NE, 62; the gate of DAG-E-[IGI], 18; and one more gate, its keeper's name badly worn, 30. The tablet never states what is being counted — men, rations, or animals — and the first two lines and the last name are too damaged to read with confidence.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine(obverse) The place of the men(?), behind/rear (egir₄): Gate of Beli-ZI: 30 less 1 (= 29). Gate of AN-GAR-kas₄: 26. Gate of [...]-belim: 62. Gate of Ga-|HI×DIŠ|-NE: 62. Gate of DAG-E₂-[IGI]: 20 less 2 (= 18). Gate of ... [DU]-ba-GIN₂(?): 30.
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# nita# egir4 ka2 be-li2-ZI 3(u@c) la2 1(disz@t) ka2 AN-GAR-kas4 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) ka2# []be#-lim# 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) ka2 ga-|HIxDISZ|-NE 1(gesz2@c) 2(asz@c) ka2 DAG#-e2#-[igi] 2(u@c) la2 2(disz@t) ka2 x [DU]-ba-GIN2#? 3(u@c)#
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 052. 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 (P227231) — 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.