The Kish tablet is “only” 5,500 years old, whereas the oldest cave painting, which features three humans and a pig, dates back to 50,000 years. However, cave paintings illustrate scenes rather than ...

An Assyrian gypsum cuneiform dedicatory panel, reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I, circa 1243-1207 BC. Of rectangular form, finely engraved on both sides, with 280 lines of text divided into eight columns ...

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1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...

The world's oldest known system of writing was influenced by symbols used for trade — engravings found on cylinders used in the exchange of farming produce and textiles, a new study suggests. The ...

Researchers have made another major stride in understanding humanity’s origins of writing. In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of ...

The man in the center with the full white beard is Mr. Finkel, an expert on cuneiform writing. The British Museum has 130,000 cuneiform clay tablets waiting to be deciphered. Finkel has a clay tablet ...

1, Looking backwards and forwards -- 2. Going to school -- 3. Who used cuneiform writing? -- 4. How do we understand it, anyway? -- 5. The scribe revealed -- 6. What happened to cuneiform? -- 7. How ...

Academics may have finally pinpointed the predecessor to humanity’s first written language. Three researchers from the University of Bologna contributed to this longstanding debate in the latest issue ...

The ancient Assyrians couldn’t exactly take to the phones like the IRS, making incessant calls demanding that loyal subjects of the kingdom pay their taxes by the deadline, but they did have vaguely ...

Digital Clay: Cuneiform languages represent the earliest known writing systems in human history. The Sumerians used this method by making indentations in clay tablets, a practice later adopted by ...

A poetic text nearly 3,000 years old has just resurfaced, bringing back to life a voice lost since antiquity. A Babylonian hymn celebrating the grandeur of the city of Babylon has been reconstructed ...