Scholars consider cuneiform the first writing system, and humans used its wedge-shaped characters to inscribe ancient ...

It now lies in the British Museum, and researchers finally think they have decoded it. Curator Irving Finkel says that the cuneiform writing on the tablet tells of the ancient Babylonians' beliefs and ...

A new study revives the old argument that ancient seals came before cuneiform, humanity's earliest known example of writing.

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.

Researchers investigating how the first writing arose identified the motifs on preliterate "cylinder seals" used in the trade of agricultural products and textiles.

In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, the earliest known writing system started around 3,000 BCE.

In the half-dark of a third-floor office, Danielle Levy lifted a clay tablet out of its box. Carefully examining it with ...

Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world's oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate ...

In the dusty city states of ancient Mesopotamia, long before the advent of written language, mysterious symbols etched into ...

Before Mesopotamian people invented writing, they used cylinder seals to press patterns into wet clay – and some of the symbols used were carried over into proto-writing ...

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 ...

This volume offers a practical introduction to the repertoire of personal names recorded in cuneiform texts from Babylonia in the first millennium BCE. In this period, individuals moved freely as well ...