Position in chronology
Subartu 02, 098
About this tablet
A small round accounting tablet from Tell Beydar — ancient Nabada — in northeastern Syria, written around 2400 BCE. A palace scribe is keeping track of barley: a gang of twelve labourers working for four days on the ruler's account ate 3 gur and 5 barig of grain, and three further amounts of barley were paid out as the price of goods obtained for or from Tinatim, Išgi, and KA-URU. It closes with a date. Tablets like this come from one of the oldest cuneiform archives ever found in Syria, and they show a northern Syrian city running its workforce with the same bookkeeping habits as the great Sumerian cities to the south.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
On the ruler's account: over four days, twelve men in the work gang were fed barley, 3 gur and 5 barig in all. Then, as purchase costs: Tinatim, 2 barig; Išgi, 1 barig; KA-URU, 3 ban. Dated to the month iti-sar, third (?) — the final sign of the month formula is written with a compound sign whose reading is not secure.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engineThe lord (en). In 4 days, 12 work-troops (erin₂) consumed barley: 3 gur 5 barig. Purchase (equivalent): Ti-na-tim: 2 barig; Iš-gi: 1 barig; KA-URU: 3 ban₂. Month: iti-sar, third (?) |LAGAB×SIG₇|.
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
en in 4(disz@t) u4 1(u@c) 2(asz@c) erin2 sze gu7 3(asz@c)# gur# 5(barig@c) nig2-sa10 ti-na-tim 2(barig@c) isz11-gi 1(barig@c) KA-URU 3(ban2@c) iti-sar esz5-|LAGABxSIG7|
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (Ebla (ca. 2350-2250 BC)) — Subartu 02, 098. 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 (P227277) — 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.