Editing Clay tablet

{{short description|Writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform}}
[[File:Tablet Rimush Louvre AO5476.jpg|thumb|List of the victories of [[Rimush (Akkad)|Rimush]], king of [[Akkadian Empire|Akkad]], upon Abalgamash, king of [[Marhashi]], and upon Emahsini, King of [[Elam]], {{Circa|2270 BCE}}.]]
In the [[Ancient Near East]],   '''clay tablets''' ([[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] {{Transliteration|akk|ṭuppu(m)}} {{lang|akk|[[:wikt:𒁾|𒁾]]}})<ref>{{cite book
| last1 = Black
| first1 = Jeremy Allen
| author-link1 = Jeremy Black (assyriologist)
| last2 = George
| first2 = Andrew R.
| author-link2 = Andrew R. George
| last3 = Postgate
| first3 = Nicholas
| author-link3 = Nicholas Postgate (assyriologist)
| year = 2000
| title = A concise dictionary of Akkadian
| publisher = [[Harrassowitz Verlag]]
| edition = 2nd
| page = 415
| isbn = 978-3-447-04264-2
| oclc = 44447973
| lccn = 00336381
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=-qIuVCsRb98C&q=clay+tablet&pg=PA415}}</ref> were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in [[cuneiform]], throughout the [[Bronze Age]] and well into the [[Iron Age]].

Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a [[stylus]] often made of [[Reed (plant)|reed]] ([[reed pen]]). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were  either deliberately fired in hot [[kilns]], or inadvertently fired when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict, making them hard and durable. Collections of these [[clay]] documents made up the first archives. They were at the root of the first [[library|libraries]]. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.<ref name="Clay Tablet">{{cite web
| last = Guisepi
| first = Robert Anthony
| author-link = Robert Anthony Guisepi
| author2 = F. Roy Willis
| year = 2003
| title = Ancient Sumeria
| work = International World History Project
| publisher = Robert A. Guisepi
| url = http://history-world.org/sumeria.htm
| access-date = 5 November 2010
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171217050456/http://history-world.org/sumeria.htm
| archive-date = 17 December 2017
| url-status = usurped
}}</ref><ref>The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative gives an estimate of {{formatnum:500000}} for the total number of tablets (or fragments) that have been found.</ref>

Most of the documents on tablets that survive from the [[Minoan civilization|Minoan]] and [[Mycenaean Greece|Mycenaean]] civilizations were created for accounting purposes. Tablets serving as labels with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region, tablets were never fired deliberately as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest, remain tablets of unfired clay and are therefore extremely fragile. For this reason, some institutions are investigating the possibility of firing them ''now'' to aid in their preservation.<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.2307/1506830|jstor=1506830 |title=An Improved Firing Treatment for Cuneiform Tablets |last1=Thickett |first1=David |last2=Odlyha |first2=Marianne |last3=Ling |first3=Denise |journal=Studies in Conservation |year=2002 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=1–11 }}</ref>

== 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"/>

== Uses of clay tablets ==
[[File:Tablet describing goddess Inanna's battle with the mountain Ebih, Sumerian - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07117.JPG|thumb|[[Sumer]]ian clay tablet, currently housed in the [[University of Chicago Oriental Institute|Oriental Institute]] at the [[University of Chicago]], inscribed with the text of the poem ''[[Inanna#Justice myths|Inanna and Ebih]]'' by the priestess [[Enheduanna]], the first author whose name is known<ref>{{cite book|author=Roberta Binkley|title=Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks|year=2004|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=9780791460993|page=47|chapter=Reading the Ancient Figure of Enheduanna}}</ref>]]
[[File:Plimpton 322.jpg|thumb|The [[Babylon]]ian [[Plimpton 322]] clay tablet, with numbers written in cuneiform script. Believed to have been written {{cx|1800 BCE}}, this table lists two of the three numbers in what are now called [[Pythagorean triples]].]]

Text on clay tablets took the forms of myths, fables, essays, hymns, proverbs, epic poetry, business records, laws, plants, and animals.<ref name="factsanddetails.com"/> What these clay tablets allowed was for individuals to record who and what was significant. An example of these great stories was ''[[Epic of Gilgamesh]]''. This story would tell of the great flood that destroyed Sumer. Remedies and recipes that would have been unknown were then possible because of the clay tablet. Some of the recipes were stew, which was made with goat, garlic, onions and sour milk.

By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE,  even the "short story" was first attempted, as independent scribes entered into the philosophical arena, with stories like: "[[Debate between bird and fish]]", and other topics, ([[Sumerian disputations|List of Sumerian debates]]).

== Communication ==
{{See also|Amarna letters}}
Communication grew faster as now there was a way to get messages across just like mail. Important and private clay tablets were coated with an extra layer of clay, that no one else would read it. This means of communicating was used for over<ref name="factsanddetails.com"/> 3000 years in fifteen different languages. Sumerians, Babylonians and Eblaites all had their own clay tablet libraries.

==Proto-writing==
The [[Tărtăria tablets]], the [[Vinča culture|Danubian civilization]], may be still older, having been dated by indirect method (bones found near the tablet were [[carbon dating|carbon dated]]) to before 4000 BCE, and possibly dating from as long ago as 5500 BCE, but their interpretation remains controversial because the tablets were fired in a furnace and the properties of the carbon changed accordingly.<ref name="Tartaria Tablets">
{{cite web
| author = Ioana Crişan
|author2=Marco Merlini
| title = Signs on Tartaria Tablets found in the Romanian folkloric art
| work = Prehistory Knowledge
| publisher = [[The Global Prehistory Consortium, Euro Innovanet]]
| url = http://www.prehistory.it/ftp/arta_populara01.htm
| access-date = 5 November 2010}}</ref>

==History by region==

===Babylonia===

Fragments of tablets containing the ''[[Epic of Gilgamesh]]'' dating to 1800–1600 BCE have been discovered. A full version has been found on tablets dated to the 1st millennium BCE.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kovacs |first1=transl., with an introd. by Maureen Gallery |title=The epic of Gilgamesh |date=2004 |publisher=Stanford Univ. Press |location=Stanford, Calif. |isbn=978-0804717113 |pages=xxi–xxii |edition=Nachdr.}}</ref>

Tablets on [[Babylonian astronomy|Babylonian astronomical records]] (such as [[Enuma Anu Enlil]] and [[MUL.APIN]]) date back to around 1800 BCE. Tablets discussing astronomical records continue through around 75 CE.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Thurston |first1=Hugh |title=Early astronomy |date=1996 |publisher=Springer |location=New York |isbn=978-0387948225 |pages=64–81 |edition= Springer study}}</ref>

Late Babylonian tablets at the [[British Museum]] refer to appearances of [[Halley's Comet]] in 164 BCE and 87 BCE.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Stephenson |first1=F. R. |last2=Yau |first2=K. K. C. |last3=Hunger |first3=H. |title=Records of Halley's comet on Babylonian tablets |journal=Nature |date=April 1985 |volume=314 |issue=6012 |pages=587–592 |doi=10.1038/314587a0 |bibcode=1985Natur.314..587S |s2cid=33251962 |language=En |issn=0028-0836}}</ref>

== See also ==
* [[Accounting token]]s
* [[Code of Hammurabi]]
* [[Complaint tablet to Ea-nasir]], the oldest known complaint letter
* [[Slate (writing)|Slate]]
* [[Wax tablet]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{Writing}}
{{Means of Exchange}}
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[[Category:Clay tablets| ]]
[[Category:Archaeological artefact types]]
[[Category:Cuneiform]]
[[Category:Writing media]]