29
/
en
AIzaSyAYiBZKx7MnpbEhh9jyipgxe19OcubqV5w
April 1, 2024
4010
774
2

Clay Tablets (dec 28, 2400 BC – dec 28, 364 BC)

Description:

In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ṭuppu(m). 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 (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 fired in hot kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.

In the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations, writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. 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 the 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 are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; some modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_tablet

Added to timeline:

2 Aug 2017
0
0
890
The History of Media
Timeline

Date:

dec 28, 2400 BC
dec 28, 364 BC
~ 2037 years

Images:

YouTube:

Geo:

PremiumAbout & FeedbackTermsPrivacy
logo
© 2022 Selected Technologies LLC – Morgan Hill, California