Close-up of a reed stylus pressing small wedge-shaped marks into a smooth, damp clay tablet in warm light
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.
doodletablet

WHAT ARCHAEOLOGY SAYS

The original tablet
was clay.

3,000 YEARS of writing on clay

  • A reed, some clay
  • Mostly bookkeeping
  • Sometimes surprising
  • Small tablets, long memories

Some of the world's oldest writing was pressed into clay.

Around 3200 B.C., scribes in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk began pressing a reed stylus into damp clay to record transactions. The wedge-shaped marks, called cuneiform, stayed in use for some 3,000 years.

Updated

Read a tablet

THE SHORT ANSWER

Wedges in clay,
for 3,000 years.

Cuneiform is a script, not a language.
Scribes used it to write many languages.

WRITING

Wedges, not letters

Scribes used a reed stylus to make wedge-shaped marks in clay. Different combinations of marks stood for syllables that built up words.

How it worked

RECORDS

Mostly accounts

Cuneiform began as a way of recording transactions, and most tablets were used for everyday bookkeeping or scribal exercises.

Read a tablet

ENDINGS

Silent for 2,000 years

The last datable tablets were written in the late first century A.D. After alphabets took over, the tablets went unread for nearly 2,000 years.

Reading them again

A QUICK TABLET CHECK

What might
a tablet say?

Pick a kind of text to see what Archaeology magazine's survey of cuneiform found. The bar shows how common that kind of tablet is.

Tablet check

Choose a kind of text
Accounts and bookkeepingMost tablets

Most tablets were used for mundane bookkeeping, such as tallying grain, or for scribal exercises.

LettersThousands

Thousands of tablets hold official and personal letters, including one from about 1750 B.C. that reads like the first recorded customer complaint, about poor copper.

RecipesThree tablets

The earliest known recipes are on three tablets from about 1800 B.C. One lists 25 recipes for stews and soups, with no measurements or cooking times.

A map of the worldUnique

A unique tablet from about the sixth century B.C. shows a circular Babylonian world surrounded by a ring called the 'ocean', with far-off regions beyond.

Source: Archaeology magazine, The World's Oldest Writing (May/June 2016), with its Letters, Recipes and Maps entries.

Based on Archaeology magazine (Archaeological Institute of America), The World's Oldest Writing, May/June 2016.

TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING

An early start,
a huge archive.

One date for the beginning,
one estimate for what survives.

≈ 3200 B.C.

When cuneiform was first developed

Sumerian scribes in the city-state of Uruk, in present-day Iraq, first developed cuneiform as a means of recording transactions.

BEGINNINGS · AIA

≈ 500,000

Cuneiform objects excavated, estimated

Archaeology magazine puts the number of excavated cuneiform objects at an estimated half a million, and many have yet to be catalogued and translated.

THE ARCHIVE · AIA

Later scribes also chiselled cuneiform into stone objects, and the script was used to write several languages besides Sumerian, most notably Akkadian.

HOW A TABLET WAS WRITTEN

Reed, clay,
and a steady hand.

Weathered mud-brick ruins of an ancient city under a pale desert sky at sunset
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

These steps follow Archaeology magazine's description of how cuneiform was written and read.

  1. Shape the clay

    Writing began with a tablet of clay, ready to take the stylus.

  2. Press the wedges

    A reed stylus pushed into the clay left wedge-shaped indentations, which give cuneiform its name.

  3. Build the words

    Different combinations of marks represented syllables, which were put together to form words.

  4. Write many languages

    The same script served scribes of many cultures, writing Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages.

READING THEM AGAIN

Lost, then
slowly decoded.

Hands smoothing a palm-sized slab of soft clay on a wooden table beside a bundle of cut reeds
AI-generated image, not a photograph of a real person or place.

It was not until the early nineteenth century, when the tablets began to be excavated, that scholars could try to read them. A key was a trilingual inscription of about 500 B.C. at Bisitun Pass in Iran, written in Persian, Akkadian and Elamite.

By matching repeated words across the three languages, specialists known as Assyriologists slowly pieced together how cuneiform worked. Some early versions of the script remain undeciphered.

Questions

Questions people ask

What is cuneiform?

A writing system made of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay with a reed stylus. It is a script rather than a language and was used to write Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages.

When and where did it begin?

Around 3200 B.C., among Sumerian scribes in the city-state of Uruk, in present-day Iraq, as a way of recording transactions.

What did people write on tablets?

Mostly bookkeeping and scribal exercises, but also letters, recipes, maps and astronomical calculations.

How many tablets survive?

Archaeology magazine estimates that about half a million cuneiform objects have been excavated, many still not catalogued or translated.

When did cuneiform stop being used?

The last datable tablets were written in the late first century A.D. Some scholars think it ended then; at least one thinks temple scribes kept it going for about two more centuries.

Sources

Where the facts come from

  1. Archaeology magazine (AIA): The World's Oldest Writing (May/June 2016)
  2. Archaeology magazine: The World's Oldest Writing, Recipes
  3. Archaeology magazine: The World's Oldest Writing, Maps
  4. Archaeology magazine: The World's Oldest Writing, Letters
  5. Archaeology magazine: The World's Oldest Writing, Last Tablets

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