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In ancient times, small tablets made out of clay were used as a writing medium.

From the 4th millennium BCE in the Sumer
Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region located in Southern Iraq , known as the Cradle of civilization. It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period through the Uruk period and the Dynastic periods until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC....
ian, Babylon
Babylon

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, sometimes considered an empire, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad....
ian, Assyrian
Assyrian

Assyrian may refer to:in antiquity:*ancient Assyria**the Old Assyrian period **the Middle Assyrian period **the Neo-Assyrian period *Assyria , a province of the Achaemenid Empire...
 and Hittite
Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
 civilisations of the Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
 region, cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed. Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets.






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In ancient times, small tablets made out of clay were used as a writing medium.

From the 4th millennium BCE in the Sumer
Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region located in Southern Iraq , known as the Cradle of civilization. It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period through the Uruk period and the Dynastic periods until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC....
ian, Babylon
Babylon

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, sometimes considered an empire, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad....
ian, Assyrian
Assyrian

Assyrian may refer to:in antiquity:*ancient Assyria**the Old Assyrian period **the Middle Assyrian period **the Neo-Assyrian period *Assyria , a province of the Achaemenid Empire...
 and Hittite
Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
 civilisations of the Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq, as well as some parts of northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khuzestan Province of southwestern Iran....
 region, cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed. Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were grilled in a kennal or fired in kilns (or when buildings were burnt down during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay
Clay

Clay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals, which show plasticity through a variable range of water content, and which can be hardened when dried and/or fired....
 documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries
Library

A library is a collection of information, sources, resources, books, and services, and the structure in which it is housed: it is organized for use and maintained by a public body, an institution, or a private individual....
. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.

The Tartaria tablets
Tartaria tablets

The Tartaria tablets are three Clay tablet, discovered in Salistea, Alba, Romania. They bear incised symbols that have been the subject of considerable controversy among archaeologists, some of whom claim that the symbols represent the earliest known form of writing in the world....
, thought to be from the Danubian civilisation
Vinca culture

The Vinca culture was an early culture of Europe , stretching around the course of Danube in what today is Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Republic of Macedonia, although traces of it can be found all around the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor....
, may be older still, having been carbon dated to before 4000 BCE, and possibly dating from as long ago as 5500 BCE, but their interpretation remains controversial.

In the Minoan
Minoan civilization

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age civilization which arose on the island of Crete. The Minoan culture flourished from approximately 27th century BC to 1450 BC; afterwards, Mycenaean Greece culture became dominant at Minoan sites in Crete....
/Mycenaean
Mycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece is a cultural period of ancient Greece taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in northeastern Argolis, in the Peloponnese of southern Greece....
 civilizations, writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. Tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; some modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.