The Development of Writing All societies have languages in which certain spoken sounds convey certain meanings. This is verbal communication. Writing too is verbal communication – but in a different way. When we talk about writing or a script, we mean that spoken sounds are represented in visible signs .
The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around BCE , contained picture-like signs and numbers. These were about , lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. – lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south. Clearly, writing began when society needed to keep records of transactions – because in city life transactions occurred at different times, and involved many people and a variety of goods.
GRAIN, FISH NUMBERS, BOAT OX Clay tablets c. BCE . Each tablet is . cm or less in height, with picture-like signs (ox, fish, grain, boat) and numbers ( ) W RITING AND C ITY L IFE Cuneiform syllabic signs.
T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in one hand. He would carefully smoothen its surfaces. With the sharp end of a reed cut obliquely, he would press wedge-shaped (‘cuneiform*’) signs on to the smoothened surface while it was still moist.
Once dried in the sun, the clay would harden and tablets would be almost as indestructible as pottery. When a written record of, say, the delivery of pieces of metal had ceased to be relevant, the tablet was thrown away. Once the surface dried, signs could not be pressed on to a tablet: so each transaction, however minor, required a separate written tablet. This is why tablets occur by the hundreds at Mesopotamian sites.
And it is because of this wealth of sources that we know so much more about Mesopotamia than we do about contemporary India. By BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian. Writing was now used not only for keeping records, but also for making dictionaries, giving legal validity to land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land. Sumerian, the earliest known language of Mesopotamia, was gradually replaced after BCE by the Akkadian language.
Cuneiform writing in the Akkadian language continued in use until the first century CE , that is, for more than , years.