Over five thousand years ago, writing and recording information was very different to how it is today. According to the website Mesopotamia.co.uk, the people of Mesopotamia developed a form of writing in order to communicate with each other about things such as taxes and crops. Pictograms were the first recorded method of writing and these were in the form of signs and pictures.
Over the next few thousand years, a writing system or script called cuneiform was developed in southern Mesopotamia and this method was used to record all sorts of events on clay tablets. Several different languages were written using cuneiform.
People imprinted the cuneiform characters on the wet clay tablets with a reed stylus, according to Wikipedia. Wet or dry, these tablets were fragile, and if they weren’t fired they could be soaked again to form new tablets. Once grilled or fired they became durable and this was a good way to preserve the writing. Luckily, some were kept and became part of the first libraries.
Cuneiform
Wikipedia explains that the stylus left a wedge-shaped impression in the clay and that’s how cuneiform got its name – as cuneus means ‘wedge’ in Latin.
My thoughts: I never intended on blogging about this today, but by just googling the word ‘writing’, I stumbled upon Mesopotamia.co.uk which encouraged me to look into the history of writing. I never paid much attention to history at school, but this has actually been quite interesting research today and certainly opened my eyes to a few things.
Hope you enjoyed it too.
Until tomorrow…
Sandra
Freelance writer
www.sandramadeira.com
(For information on my services as a freelance writer as well as details of my book and other blogs).
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