Clay tablet
Tablilla de arcilla
- Date
- c. 3300 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Uruk, Sumer, Iraq
- Credited to
- Sumerians
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A writing medium that is cheap, mouldable and, once fired or dried, almost indestructible. Its durability explains why hundreds of thousands of Mesopotamian documents survive.
What it led to
- Permanent temple and palace archives that allowed decades of transactions to be audited
- Sealed clay envelopes protecting contracts against forgery
- Unintentional preservation of Mesopotamia's memory, thanks to the fires that baked the archives