Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 076
About this tablet
A small clay account tablet from Tell Beydar — ancient Nabada — in the Khabur plains of northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. It records measured allotments of barley: so much to Šu-kabba, so much to A-zazu, a larger amount for a household woman, and grain "consumed" as rations or fodder reckoned over eleven days, closing with a quantity assigned under a man named Beli-sulum. The names are Semitic rather than Sumerian, which is what makes the Beydar archive important: it shows a fully functioning cuneiform bureaucracy operating in Syria, far from the southern Mesopotamian heartland, in the same centuries as the great city-states of Sumer.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Grain issued: Šu-kabba, 2 barig; A-zazu, 1 barig; the wife, 4 gur 2 barig 4 ban. One entry here is damaged. Then, under the heading iti-sar: 3 gur, plus 4 barig 3 ban of barley used up as feed. Il-e-išar receives 2 barig 3 ban. Lu-geš-DU is credited with 50 (units), covering eleven days. Final total: 2 gur, entered under the iti-sar account of Beli-sulum.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineŠu-kabba: 2 barig. A-zazu: 1 barig. The wife (dam): 4 gur 2 barig 4 ban. […] 3 in (at/from): 3 gur — iti-sar — 4 barig 3 ban: barley consumed (as fodder/rations). Il-e-išar: 2 barig 3 ban. Lu-geš-DU: 50. In 11 days. 2 gur. iti-sar of Beli-sulum.
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-kab-ba4 2(barig@c) a-za-zu2 1(barig@c) dam 4(asz@c) 2(barig@c) 4(ban2@c) X3 in 3(asz@c) iti-sar 4(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) sze gu7 il2-e-i-szar 2(barig@c) 3(ban2@c) lu2-gesz-DU 5(u@c) in 1(u@c) 1(asz@c) u4 2(asz@c) gur iti-sar be-li2 su-lum
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 076. 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 (P227255) — 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.