Kish tablet
The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at Tell al-Uhaymir, Babil Governorate, Iraq - the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish. It is dated to ca. 3500 BC (middle Uruk period). A plaster-cast of the artifact is today in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
The Kish tablet is inscribed with proto-cuneiform signs, and may be considered the oldest known written document. The writing is, however, still purely pictographic, and represents a transitional stage between proto-writing and the emergence of the partly syllabic writing of the cuneiform script proper. The "protoliterate period" of Egypt and Mesopotamia is taken to span about 3500 to 2900 BC. The Kish tablet is thus more accurately identified as the first document of the Mesopotamian protoliterate period. Several hundred documents dating to about the 32nd century BC have been found at Uruk. The administrative texts of the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC), found among other places at Jemdet Nasr and Tell Uqair represent a further stage in the development from proto-cuneiform to cuneiform, but can still not be identified with certainty as being written in Sumerian, although it is likely.[1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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- ^ Woods, Christopher (2010), "The earliest Mesopotamian writing", in Woods, Christopher, Visible language. Inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond, Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 33–50, ISBN 9781885923769, http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/oimp32.pdf
[edit] Further reading
- A. C. Moorhouse, The Triumph of the Alphabet: A History of Writing
- Langdon, Pictographic Inscriptions from Jemdet Nasr
- Peter N. Stearns, The Encyclopedia of World History (2001), ISBN 978-0395652374.
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