Tablet Of Pre-Cuneiform Script

Pictogram Script Tablet Pre-Cuneiform

This baked clay tablet from southern Mesopotamia reveals a picture script with notches that were made with a cylindrical instrument rather than triangular as with cuneiform. It dates back to the fourth millennium BC before the flood of Noah.

Louvre Excerpt

Tablet of pre-cuneiform script
South Mesopotamia
Uruk III, end of the 4th millennium BC.
Clay (?sun-baked clay)
H. 7.2 cm
AO 29560

Description

"The increasing complexity of transactions, provoked by the volume of exchanges, was at the origin of the invention of means of recording. At the end of the 4th millennium BC there appeared the first document written on clay tablets. These were accounting documents on which the figures are shown by notches, and the goods by pictograms. This tablet also mentions the names of Uruk and Dilmun, the present island of Bahrain." - Louvre

Genesis 15:7 - And he said unto him, I [am] the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Copyright © 2001 The Louvre Louvre Musée

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Bibliography on Ancient Art

The Art of Ancient Egypt, Revised by Robins, 272 Pages, Pub. 2008