Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 085
About this tablet
A small clay tablet from Tell Beydar — ancient Nabada, a walled town in the Khabur plains of northeastern Syria — written around 2400 BCE. It is a travel-expense note: the local ruler (the 'lord') arrived, stayed three days, and the administration recorded the barley eaten by his donkeys and his party of twelve men. Records like this are how the palace at Nabada kept track of the grain that left its stores, and they give a rare, ground-level view of an official's journey in third-millennium Syria.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Dated to the crescent-moon day at Belim. The lord arrived and stayed three days. Fodder and provisions were issued for the donkeys and for a work party of twelve men; the barley they consumed came to 2 gur, 2 barig and 2 ban. The back of the tablet was left blank — the whole account fit on one side.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineCrescent-day(?) of Belim; šu, fodder(?), aromatics(?); the lord came, three days he stayed. Donkeys, 12 work-troop(s): barley consumed — 2 gur 2 barig 2 ban. (Reverse uninscribed; edges bear no legible signs, only the modern museum markings Bey 94-17 / 2300-1-13.)
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
u4-sar be-lim szu u2 szim en ba-gin 3(disz@t) u4 al-tusz ansze 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) erin2 sze gu7 2(asz@c) gur 2(barig@c) 2(ban2@c)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 085. 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 (P227264) — 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.