Hundreds of clay tablets marked in cuneiform have been found in excavations of the Sumerian city of Uruk (in present-day Iraq). Though the tablets date from roughly 3000 B.C., the writing on them uses relatively few pictographs; instead, numerous abstract symbols are used. The sign for “sheep”, for example, is not an by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in her book Before Writing (1992) as overlooked predecessors to the written word.
The earliest of the tokens were simple in form—small cones, spheres, and pyramids—and they were often inscribed. In 1966, a hollow tablet containing several of these tokens was discovered, and more than 100 additional tablets, which are now recognized as sealed envelopes of clay, have since been found. Later envelopes are also as bowls or jars with handles, suggesting that villagers’ crafts were becoming more diversified and sophisticated.
The token system, essentially a system of three- dimensional nouns, was replaced in about 3100 B.C. by a system of marks on clay tablets. A few centuries later, this latter system was to display the first use of numerals, where simple marks coded the concepts of one, two, and so forth. The that denoted oil itself. With three such signs, an abstract and flexible written form had arrived.
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