#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.

#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)