Clay tablet

In the <a href="/facts/Ancient_Near_East/Ipt8t839">Ancient Near East</a>, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in <a href="/facts/Cuneiform/MgIQoGu8">cuneiform</a>, throughout the <a href="/facts/Bronze_Age/c09qWcTt">Bronze Age</a> and well into the <a href="/facts/Iron_Age/mpQYShI0">Iron Age</a>.
Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a <a href="/facts/Stylus/71P3StMj">stylus</a> often made of <a href="/facts/Reed_(plant)/yb90F7ND">reed</a> (<a href="/facts/Reed_pen/VkruDXWI">reed pen</a>). 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 either deliberately fired in hot <a href="/facts/Kilns/MFTuDWhU">kilns</a>, or inadvertently fired when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict, making them hard and durable. Collections of these <a href="/facts/Clay/xnwouEkB">clay</a> documents made up the first archives. They were at the root of the first <a href="/facts/Library/hvdQNTtS">libraries</a>. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.
Most of the documents on tablets that survive from the <a href="/facts/Minoan_civilization/bBEWlPrP">Minoan</a> and <a href="/facts/Mycenaean_Greece/gMAaS0jY">Mycenaean</a> civilizations were created for accounting purposes. 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, 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, remain tablets of unfired clay and are therefore extremely fragile. For this reason, some institutions are investigating the possibility of firing them now to aid in their preservation.

Clay tablet open-in-new

Clay tablet