BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The Birth of Writing

Proto-cuneiform tablet discovered in southern Iraq

Proto-Cuneiform tablet from Tell Zurghul. Courtesy Sapienza University of Rome.

Undoubtedly, writing is one of humanity’s most significant inventions, emerging in the ancient Near East, in both Mesopotamia and Egypt, nearly simultaneously. In Mesopotamia, the earliest evidence of what can definitively be called writing—recorded in the cuneiform script—shows up in the ancient city of Uruk at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. However, a new discovery at Tell Zurghul, 50 miles east of Uruk in southern Iraq, provides new evidence of the spread of cuneiform at the very dawn of writing.

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Writing Before Writing

Excavations at Tell Zurghul (ancient Ningin) by Sapienza University of Rome uncovered a small clay tablet inscribed in proto-cuneiform. Proto-cuneiform was the precursor to the later cuneiform script and was in use in the region of Uruk for a few hundred years before the evolution of cuneiform. Like other proto-scripts, proto-cuneiform was not quite a full writing system, as it could only convey a limited range of information, such as quantities of goods and commodities. Today, this would be much the same as making a shopping list using only the food emojis on your phone.

What makes this discovery particularly important, however, is that it is one of very few such tablets found outside the Uruk region and the first to be discovered in the region of Lagash. Thus, the tablet provides new evidence for the spread of proto-cuneiform and its early use as a record-keeping system. According to a Sapienza University press release, the tablet records the distribution of large quantities of fish. The tablet’s scribe also notes 500 wicker baskets, which would have been used to transport the fish. Excavations at the site have discovered numerous fish bones along with bitumen seals that bear wicker impressions, showing that such baskets were a common element of the city’s ancient economy.

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