The World's Oldest Writing
Used by scribes for more than three millennia, cuneiform writing opens a dramatic window onto ancient Mesopotamian life
By THE EDITORS
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
SCRIBE STATUE. FOUND: Lagash, Iraq. CULTURE: Sumerian. DATE: ca. 2400 B.C. LANGUAGE: Sumerian.
In early 2016, hundreds of media outlets around the world reported that a set of recently deciphered ancient clay tablets revealed that Babylonian astronomers were more sophisticated than previously believed. The wedge-shaped writing on the tablets, known as cuneiform, demonstrated that these ancient stargazers used geometric calculations to predict the motion of Jupiter. Scholars had assumed it wasn’t until almost A.D. 1400 that these techniques were first employed—by English and French mathematicians. But here was proof that nearly 2,000 years earlier, ancient people were every bit as advanced as Renaissance-era scholars. Judging by the story’s enthusiastic reception on social media, this discovery captured the public imagination. It implicitly challenged the perception that cuneiform tablets were used merely for basic accounting, such as tallying grain, rather than for complex astronomical calculations. While most tablets were, in fact, used for mundane bookkeeping or scribal exercises, some of them bear inscriptions that offer unexpected insights into the minute details of and momentous events in the lives of ancient Mesopotamians.
https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing
