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Clay tablet showing hieroglyphics

Before Books

  • Cuneiform Tablet

Cuneiform Tablet

2050 BCE


Cuneiform writing, developed by the ancient culture of Sumer in the region of modern-day Iraq, was one of the first scripts used to record information. It was written on dampened hand-shaped clay tablets, using a wedged stick (cunea being Latin for wedge), which were then sun-dried or fired.

The earliest tablets, from around the end of the fourth millennium BCE, record the transactions of tax collectors and merchants. They later began to record laws and texts on astronomy, literature, medicine and mathematics.

This tablet, which was made in Southern Mesopotamia, records the delivery of taxes, paid in sheep and goats in the 10th month of the 46th year of Shulgi, second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur.