Written History

In this gallery, the history of human writing will be documented. Artifacts that document the history of writing throughout the ages will be exhibited. Please note that only artifacts that are in the museum collection will be featured in this gallery meaning that the earliest artifacts won't be the oldest known examples but the oldest in the museum collection. It is also important to know that this exhibit, like the museum site as a whole, is a work in progress. As we learn more about our artifacts we will update the descriptions. Thank you for visiting the exhibit!

One of the earliest documented writing systems is Sumerian cuneiform as exemplified by the tablet shown on the left.

One of the earliest examples of a developed writing system dates back to ancient Sumer located in Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq. Here the cuneiform script was developed around 3200 BCE by Sumerian scribes living in Uruk, a Sumerian city-state, using triangular reed styluses to create indentations onto clay tablets. However as time went on and as cuneiform gained traction, scribes would also create these indentations onto stone surfaces as well as clay. The cuneiform script worked using arrangements and combinations of symbols to form syllables which, when arranged in certain patterns, would form words. It is important to note that cuneiform was not a language but a script that was used by several Mesopotamian cultures including the Sumerians, the inventors of the script, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians who all used it in their respective written languages.

As cuneiform began to fall out of fashion, so did the knowledge of translating and reading these tablets, and it wasn't until the beginning of the 19th century that archeologists and scholars began trying to decipher them. One of the key discoveries that lead to our understanding of cuneiform script was the discovery of a trilingual inscription circa 500 BCE written in Akkadian, Persian, and Elamite, a written language originating in Iran. The inscription describes the accomplishments of the Achaemenid king Darius the Great who reigned from 521 BCE to 486 BCE, and by using repetitive Persian-language words such as "king" and "Darius," scholars, known as Assyriologists, were able to learn, translate, and transcribe the text from the trilingual inscription. Thanks to these feats of painstaking research and translation, we now have a detailed understanding of not only the written works of the ancient Mesopotamians, but also their laws, lifestyles, and religions.

References:

• Archaeological Institute of America. 2016. “The World’s Oldest Writing - Archaeology Magazine.” Www.archaeology.org. Archaeological Institute of America. June 2016. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing#:~:text=First%20developed%20around%203200%20B.C..