A script made for clay
Cuneiform takes its name from the Latin word for wedge, and the description fits. Instead of drawing lines, a scribe pressed the end of a cut reed into a lump of soft clay. Each press left a small wedge, and combinations of wedges in different directions formed the signs. The script developed in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, and the earliest tablets with proto-cuneiform signs are usually dated to the late fourth millennium BCE. Dates for the very earliest stages are approximate and still discussed by scholars.
The material shaped the writing. Curved lines are hard to make by pushing a stylus into clay, so early pictorial signs gradually became more abstract and wedge-based. Over time the script was adapted to write several different languages, including Sumerian and Akkadian, and it stayed in use for roughly three thousand years.
Making and writing a tablet
The materials were simple. River clay was cleaned, kneaded and shaped by hand into a pillow-like or flat piece that fit comfortably in the palm for small records, while larger tablets were used for longer texts. The scribe smoothed the surface, then wrote in horizontal lines. The stylus was typically a reed with a cut end, and some scribes also used bone or metal tools, though reed was the common choice.
Clay had to be written on while it was still damp. A tablet that dried too quickly could not be marked cleanly, so scribes presumably worked at a steady pace and kept their supply moist. Corrections were easy at the wet stage: smooth the surface and write again. Once the clay dried in the sun, the text was fixed.
Sun-dried and fired tablets
Most everyday tablets were simply left to dry. Some were deliberately baked in a kiln or fire, which made them harder and more lasting, and this treatment is more often found on documents meant to endure. There is also an accident of survival. When cities were burned, tablets stored in the buildings could be baked by the fire, so destruction sometimes preserved the very records it was meant to erase. This is one reason archaeologists have recovered such large numbers of tablets, many from the ruins of palaces and temples.
Clay does not rot, and it does not burn the way papyrus or parchment can. That durability is the main reason we know so much about Mesopotamian administration compared with cultures that wrote on perishable materials.
What scribes recorded
A common image is of tablets bearing great literature, but a large share of the surviving ones are practical. Typical subjects include:
- receipts and deliveries of grain, livestock and textiles
- lists of workers and rations
- contracts, loans and legal decisions
- school exercises, word lists and copied texts
- letters, omens, medical and mathematical texts, and literary works
The best-known literary example is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which survives in several versions on tablets. Large collections, such as the library associated with the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at Nineveh in the seventh century BCE, show that texts were gathered and copied deliberately.
Envelopes, seals and security
Clay also supported early systems for protecting documents. For some agreements, a tablet was wrapped in a thin clay envelope, and a summary or the sealing impressions were placed on the outside. Breaking the envelope revealed the original, so a dispute could be checked against the sealed copy. Cylinder seals, small carved stones rolled across wet clay, served as signatures for individuals and offices.
Scribal training was demanding. Learning the large sign repertoire took years, and many students practiced on tablets in school settings. Writing was a specialist skill, not a general one.
Limits of clay
For all its durability, clay was awkward. A tablet with a long text was heavy, and an archive could fill rooms. Transport over distance was difficult, and the wet stage limited how and where scribes could work. As Aramaic and alphabetic scripts spread, and as lighter materials such as papyrus and parchment became available, cuneiform tablets gradually fell out of use. The last datable cuneiform texts are generally placed in the early centuries CE.
Rediscovery
The script was forgotten for centuries and then deciphered in the nineteenth century through the efforts of several scholars working on multilingual inscriptions. Today, excavation teams record finds with methods that range from hand drawing to digital excavation records, and tablets continue to turn up in museum storerooms as well as in the ground. Many remain unread, which means our picture of ancient Mesopotamia is still being revised.