Position in chronology
The oldest writing in the world - The Sumerian Stone Tablet
Translation · reference
ExperimentalSource: Wikimedia Commons file: File:The oldest writing in the world - The Sumerian Stone Tablet.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_oldest_writing_in_the_world_-_The_Sumerian_Stone_Tablet.jpg. Description: A Sumerian Stone Tablet containing a Locust Charm; unknown origin (p. 30). It was labelled in a 1907 book as "the oldest writing in the world". The tablet records the means taken to rid various tracts of the land of a plague of locust and c
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Tablet image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). No scholarly translation referenced in source metadata. Source description: A Sumerian Stone Tablet containing a Locust Charm; unknown origin (p. 30). It was labelled in a 1907 book as "the oldest writing in the world". The tablet records the means taken to rid various tracts
Attribution
Image: editorship by Prof. Charles F. Horne — Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from Wikimedia Commons file: File:The oldest writing in the world - The Sumerian Stone Tablet.jpg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_oldest_writing_in_the_world_-_The_Sumerian_Stone_Tablet.jpg. Description: A Sumerian Stone Tablet containing a Locust Charm; unknown origin (p. 30). It was labelled in a 1907 book as "the oldest writing in the world". The tablet records the means taken to rid various tracts of the land of a plague of locust and c.
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.