Four small, clay tablets, unearthed in 2004, are finally gaining attention as possibly the first evidence of an alphabet, but ...

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq. Sumerian was a non-Semitic ...

Researchers have discovered that a clay tablet found in Turkey is actually a 3,500-year-old receipt, on which someone recorded a furniture sale. Written in cuneiform—an ancient Middle Eastern ...

Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, and humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient languages such as Sumerian on clay tablets beginning around 3400 BC.

This piece of clay contains some of the earliest writing in the world. It's called 'cuneiform,' which means wedge-shaped. This tablet is a record of the daily beer rations for workers. Beer here ...