Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 060
About this tablet
A small round clay tablet from the palace archive at Tell Beydar (ancient Nabada) in northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. It records the wool harvest handed over to the palace after the sheep were plucked or sheared: five batches of 100 units each, plus a remainder of 26, and a separate small lot of five units of a particular grade described as "clean." Beydar's tablets are among the oldest cuneiform documents found in Syria, and this one shows a provincial palace running the single most valuable industry of the ancient Near East — wool — through the same bookkeeping habits used in southern Mesopotamia.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Wool from the shearing, delivered to the palace. Five lots of 100 each, plus a further 26 — 526 in all. Separately, five units of bar-ASZ-grade wool, marked "clean." The reverse of the tablet is otherwise left blank apart from that final entry.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineObverse: Wool, (from) the plucking/shearing; the palace; delivered (lit. "handed over"). 100 (1 gešʾ 40) 100 (1 gešʾ 40) 100 (1 gešʾ 40) 100 (1 gešʾ 40) 100 (1 gešʾ 40) 26 Reverse: Wool of the bar-ASZ (grade): 5 — SIKIL ("clean/pure").
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
siki ur4 e2-gal szu mu-kux(DU) 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 1(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) siki bar-ASZ 5(asz@c) SIKIL
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 060. 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 (P227239) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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Related sources
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