Recording goods in clay
Around 3200–3100 BCE, scribes at Uruk recorded grain, animals and other goods on clay tablets. Damp clay could be shaped easily, incised with a pointed tool or impressed to make numerical marks. As urban institutions handled more receipts and distributions, tablets preserved quantities, commodity categories and administrative transactions. Information could be consulted again after the immediate exchange had ended.
References: [1]
From counting devices to signs
Earlier Near Eastern settlements used small clay counters to represent goods, alongside seals and clay sealings. Archaeologists have connected these accounting practices with the development of tablet signs. Early writing employed different numerical and metrological systems for different things: quantities of grain, areas of land and counts of animals were not all recorded in the same way. Scribes had to learn the appropriate conventions for each account.
Learning a repertoire
Some signs retained recognizable outlines of objects, while others were more abstract. Alongside accounts, tablets preserved categorized lists of occupations, animals and other names. Such lists organized the sign repertoire and helped transmit scribal knowledge. Writing became trained work involving the recognition of signs, the layout of a tablet, checks on numbers and the maintenance of shared conventions within institutions.
Writing extended to language
After the earliest accounts, signs increasingly acquired sound values that could record personal names and more complete language. Their forms changed through use, with wedge-shaped impressions from a reed stylus becoming characteristic of Mesopotamian scripts. Writing expanded to laws, royal inscriptions, prayers and narratives. A tablet carried words beyond the presence of a speaker, allowing them to be read again in another place or time.