Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 068
About this tablet
A small, sealed clay tablet from Tell Beydar — ancient Nabada — in the plains of northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. It is a barley ration list: a scribe of the palace administration recorded portions of grain, measured in ban₂ (roughly ten liters each), issued to named men, among them one Šu-belim who appears twice. The names are Semitic rather than Sumerian, a reminder that cuneiform bookkeeping had already spread far beyond southern Iraq into the Syrian steppe. Cylinder-seal impressions rolled across the edges show that an official authorized the disbursement.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain issued: Šu-belim, four measures. Il-e-išar, two measures. Iku-[…], amount lost. New(-crop) grain, three measures. Bad-lam. The carpenter. Two lines are broken away. Šu-belim again, five measures. Another line is lost. Šu-irga[…]. Daḫati-[…]-um. The last line gives the month and closes with the names Beli and one more that cannot be securely read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineŠu-belim: 4 ban₂ (of barley). Il-e-išar: 2 ban₂(?). Iku-[…]: […] GIBIL ("new"): 3 ban₂. Bad-lam. The carpenter(?). […] […] Šu-belim: 5 ban₂. […] Šu-irga[…]. Daḫati-[…]-um. Month …(?), Beli, |ŠU₂.SA|-la.
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
szu#-be-lim 4(ban2@c) il2-e-i-szar 2(ban2@c)? i-ku-[x x] GIBIL 3(ban2@c) bad3-lam na-gar3# [...] [...] szu#-be-lim 5(ban2@c) [...] szu-ir-ga [x] da-ha#-ti-[x]-um iti-sar# be-li2 |SZU2.SA|#-la
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 068. 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 (P227247) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
An early example of administrative writing from Uruk. Its fragmentary numerical entries and commodity signs document record-keeping during the formative period of writing.
A surviving administrative record of named people and livestock in the Ur III period. Together with other archives, such accounts reveal the work of managing animals, deliveries and institutional responsibility.