Mesopotamia Written Records in the Hermitage

Mesopotamia was the birthplace of perhaps the world's oldest system of writing, which we now refer to as cuneiform. It received its modern designation from the wedge-shaped impressions composing its signs (from Latin cuneus "wedge"). Each sign was a combination of tiny "wedges" imprinted on a clay tablet with a triangular-shaped stick. The earliest written documents were administrative records that appeared in the south of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. Cuneiform was then used for more than three millennia to write texts in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages spoken in Mesopotamia, as well as in Hittite, Ugaritic, and other languages of the Ancient Near East. Many more written records have survived from Mesopotamia than from other ancient civilizations. There are several hundred thousand of them in the world; over two and a half thousand cuneiform tablets can be found in the Hermitage collection alone. Such an abundance of cuneiform sources is explained by the fact that unlike other ancient peoples, Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians used clay as the material for their writing. Clay was not easy to destroy or damage, and became even stronger during fires that were fatal for papyrus, parchment, and paper.

Cuneiform texts are quite diverse in genre and content. There are examples of inventories, lists of laborers and manufactured goods, documents notifying sale transactions, protocols of court hearings, literary and religious texts, medical prescriptions, divination reports, plans and maps, letters of officials and private parties, school "textbooks" and "notebooks", as well as many other texts. One British archeologist referred to cuneiform tablets as "ancient television"-indeed, they reveal the long vanished world of Mesopotamia for us.

Mesopotamia was not only the birthplace of writing, but also of bureaucracy, archiving, and libraries. Economic and legal documents were composed in strict accordance with special forms that changed from one period of Mesopotamian history to another. The shape of tablets also varied from one epoch to another. They could be rectangular, long and narrow, or, on the contrary, almost square, sometimes with rounded edges. They could be flat on one side, and convex-shaped on the other, or even pillow-shaped. The genre of the text also influenced its appearance: often it is possible to tell the difference between a letter and an economic record by the shape of the tablet without reading its content. School exercises are easily recognizable by their round shape – such tablets were convenient for children to hold in their hands.

Tablets were formed from clay soaked in water and cleaned of impurities. Its size depended on the length and purpose of the text, and varied from one centimeter to half a meter in length. Sometimes, miniature tablets, densely covered in minute signs, could contain a large text (up to thirty lines). For the modern researcher, who often studies the text under a magnifying glass, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how the ancient scribe, who had no such instruments, could write it. Both sides of a tablet, as well as its edges, were used for writing. In order to align the writing, the surface of the tablet was often ruled: a string was used to make horizontal lines on the wet clay, and if the text contained several columns, vertical lines were also used.