Editing Clay tablet (section)

== Scribes (''dub-sar'') ==
Writing was not as we see it today.<!--what does that mean?--> In Mesopotamia, writing began as simple counting marks, sometimes alongside a non-arbitrary sign, in the form of a simple image, pressed into clay tokens or less commonly cut into wood, stone or pots. In that way, the exact number of goods involved in a transaction could be recorded. This convention began when people developed agriculture and settled into permanent communities that were centered on increasingly large and organized trading marketplaces.<ref name=" HRCEarly Writing">{{cite web | url=http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/early/ | title=Early Writing | website=[[Harry Ransom Center|Harry Ransom Center – University of Texas at Austin]] | access-date=9 October 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180106024514/http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/early/ | archive-date=6 January 2018 | url-status=dead }}</ref> These marketplaces were purposed for the trade of sheep, grain, and bread loaves, where transactions were recorded with clay tokens. These, initially very small clay tokens, were continually used all the way from the pre-historic Mesopotamia period, 9000 BCE, to the start of the historic period around 3000 BCE, when the use of writing for recording was widely adopted.<ref name="HRCEarly Writing"/>

The clay tablet was thus being used by [[scribe]]s to record events happening during their time. Tools that these scribes used were styluses with sharp triangular tips, making it easy to leave markings on the clay;<ref name="ancient1">{{cite web|url=https://www.worldhistory.org/cuneiform/ |title=Cuneiform – World History Encyclopedia |publisher=[[World History Encyclopedia]] |access-date=2014-06-16}}</ref> the clay tablets themselves came in a variety of colors such as bone white, chocolate, and charcoal.<ref name="factsanddetails.com">[http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub363/item1525.html Cuneiform – Sumerian tablets and the world's oldest writing]. ''factanddetails.com''.</ref> [[Pictographs]] then began to appear on clay tablets around 4000 BCE, and after the later development of Sumerian cuneiform writing, a more sophisticated partial [[Syllabary|syllabic script]] evolved that by around 2500 BCE was capable of recording the vernacular, the everyday speech of the common people.<ref name="factsanddetails.com"/>

Sumerians used what is known as [[pictograms]].<ref name="HRCEarly Writing"/> Pictograms are symbols that express a pictorial concept, a [[logogram]], as the meaning of the word. Early writing also began in [[Ancient Egypt]] using [[Egyptian hieroglyphs|hieroglyphs]]. Early hieroglyphs and some of the modern [[Chinese character classification|Chinese characters]] are other examples of pictographs. The Sumerians later shifted their writing to Cuneiform, defined as "Wedge writing" in Latin, which added phonetic symbols, [[syllabogram]]s.<ref name="ancient1"/>