Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 066
About this tablet
A small administrative tablet from Tell Beydar (ancient Nabada) in northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. It is a wool account: the heading word 'wool' is followed by a short list of men — Tab-la-a-lim, Iš-gi, Kur-ilum and others — each credited with a measure of grain (barig and ban) alongside a weight in mana, the standard unit for wool. The tablet is broken and pitted, so several names and numbers are lost. Texts like this come from the palace archive of a modest Syrian city-state and show how a northern administration issued rations and raw materials to named individuals, using the same measuring system as the Sumerian south.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Wool account. Tab-la-a-lim: one barig, plus six mana. Another name, now lost: one barig and three ban; three-plus mana. Iš-gi: one barig and three ban. ḪI-A: two ban (reading uncertain). ḪAL-ti: one barig and three ban. Two-plus mana. Kur-ilum: one barig. Several entries are damaged and their figures incomplete, and the back of the tablet carries no writing.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineWool (siki). Tab-la-a-[lim]: 1 barig [ … ] 6 mana. … [ … ]: 1 barig 3 ban. [n +] 3 mana. Iš-gi: 1 barig 3 ban. ḪI-A: 2 ban(?). ḪAL-ti: 1 barig 3 ban. 2 [+ n] mana. Kur-ilum: 1 barig. (Reverse: uninscribed / no legible signs.)
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 tab-la-a#-lim# 1(barig@c) [x] 6(asz@c) ma-na x [x x] 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) [n] 3(asz@c) ma-na isz11-gi 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) HI#-A 2(ban2@c)? HAL-ti# 1(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) 2(asz@c) [n] ma-na kur-i3-lum 1(barig@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 066. 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 (P227245) — 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.