#1 Introduction

As I pondered my chosen topic 'Clay Tablets As Library Materials', I decided my first step would be to gain some basic knowledge that would be suitable as an introduction for my research and to help organize a plan of direction. I decided to browse my P-12 college and local public library book resources to answer some what, how, where, who and why type questions to gain a general introduction to the topic before searching electronically. Some of my new found knowledge follows.

Mesopotamia was a country located in what was then referred to as the Ancient Near East region. Ancient Mesopotamia comprises of most of Iraq, and small parts of both Syria and south east Turkey, countries that we know today. It was a country of many 'firsts'. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of the first known civilization, cities, the invention of the wheel, agriculture and irrigation, all mechanisms that ensured the survival of a population and their culture at that time.

It was in Sumer, Southern Mesopotamia (later known as Babylonia), that a nomadic people settled in a fertile area bounded by the two river systems, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Archaeological finds have proven that during the third millennium (approximately 3500BC), that it was these inhabitants that were the inventors of the earliest forms of writing which was then followed later by mathematics. This map shows the northern and southern regions of Ancient Mesopotamia called Assyria and Akkad Sumer. It is in the southern region that a nomadic people settled and were known as the Sumerians.

Map image - The Greco-Roman world: the east (Casson, L 2002, Libraries in the Ancient World, Yale University Press, New Haven)