#2 Sumerian Clay Tablets

Digesting the information that I gleaned from Lionel Casson’s book about who invented the earliest forms of writing and subsequently infant libraries, I noted keywords, phrases and new terminology to help enlarge the areas that I could now begin to search. I commenced with reading monograms discovered on library catalogues followed by web browsing, linking and journal searches.

Scanned Image - Clay Tablet

[Donoughue, C 2007, The story of writing, British Museum Press, London]

Archaeological 'finds' in Ancient Mesopotamia have uncovered numerous forms of clay tablets. Wet clay, the material used by the early Sumerian civilization was abundant as the Sumerian people had settled on land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The clay tablets were formed by hand and once inscribed, were sun baked (ideal desert climate for this) or kiln baked. More importantly, from the historical point of view, the clay tablet has stood the test of time (unlike the papyrus scrolls developed by the Ancient Egyptians). The clay tablet was in use for more than two and half millennia from the beginning of the Bronze Age and in some cases to the beginning of the Christian era.

Clay tablets recorded a range of information that recorded both facts and ideas of the civilization including business transactions, employment arrangements, laws, legends, proverbs, poems and music [Cowley, D & Williamson, C 2007, The world of the book, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, p. 3).

The link to the University Library of the VU Amsterdam University shows some excellent digital examples of early clay tablets (some 49) that have been photographed from different angles.