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Mesopotamia, the birthplace of modern civilization, used clay tablets dating back to 3,500 BC to record the first writings. The tablets span 3,000 years and offer insight into early civilization, including the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative aims to digitally archive images and translations of tablets dating from 3,350 BC onward. Many priceless artifacts were lost during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Clay tablets from Mesopotamia, dating back to 3,500 BC, were used to record mankind’s first writings. Mesopotamia is believed to be the birthplace of modern civilization, with the great city of Ur founded around 4,000 BC by the people of Sumer, a Mesopotamian “providence.” Ur was a cultural and commercial center millennia before the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations, and is thought to be the home of the biblical Abraham. These areas today are found in modern Iraq along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
The clay tablets were made of earth and water, inscribed while wet with a stick-like stylus, then baked in the sun to preserve the cuneiform markings. The Mesopotamian clay tablets span a period of 3,000 years, are written in several languages, and provide a fascinating window into early civilization. From administrative records to sales receipts, school books to private letters, dictionaries to astronomy, the clay tablets of Mesopotamia allow modern scholars an invaluable insight into our past. The tablets also include humour, such as a discourse between a plow and a hoe discussing the morality of humility versus pride.
One of the most famous and repeated stories found in the Mesopotamian clay tablets is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which first appears before 2,000 BC. Later versions have also been recovered, the best preserved being written on a series of 12 tablets from VII century BC The epic recounts the adventures of the king of Uruk, involving many mythical tales including Gilgamesh who told the story of a great flood, thought to have inspired the Biblical writers who followed.
Around 2,100 BC Ur was overrun and much of it destroyed. The tablets faithfully record many poems and laments for the once great city, including the following:
The storm left the city that day
that city was a ruin. . .
People cry.
Dead men, no shards littered the entrances,
The walls were wide open;
the high doors, the street, were piled up with the dead.
In the side streets, where crowds cheer
would collect,
Scattered, they lie.
All over the streets and roads lie bodies.
In open fields that once filled with dancers,
they lie in heaps.
The country’s blood now filled its holes,
as metal in a mold;
Bodies dissolved, like fat left in the sun.
Source: Oates J. Babylon. London: Thames and Hudson, 1986
An estimated 500,000 clay tablets have survived to the present day, held in museums and private collections. However, with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, many priceless artifacts were destroyed or looted from unprotected Iraqi museums. Among the lost treasures was a collection of some 170,000 clay tablets from Mesopotamia.
As a result of this devastating loss, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) was founded. A joint venture of UCLA and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the CDLI, in collaboration with Assyriologists, curators and historians from around the world, intends to digitally archive images and translations of tablets dating from 3,350 BC onward. This ongoing digital library is available on the Internet at the CDLI site, where you can also find a list of museums with clay tablets on public display.
Although clay tablets served as the notebooks of their day, the ancient Egyptians had discovered the forerunner of paper as early as 4,000 BC. Papyrus was made from a plant that grew along the Nile River, however, the Egyptians so prized their secret for the making of papyrus, was the only thing they never wrote.
