1. The creation that started history

2.  Writing
as we
know it today,
began with the
use of clay
tokens to
represent items
of value.

3.  They
used
large
hollow
balls of
clay as a
sort of
envelope.

4.  Early
pictograms
resembled the
objects they
represented, but
through repeated
use over time they
began to look
simpler. These
marks eventually
became wedgeshaped and could
convey sounds or
abstract concepts.

5.  People
wrote on clay tablets
using a sharpened reed.
They would simply push into
the soft clay.
 At first, they wrote
vertically.
 Eventually, they turned their
symbols on their sides and
started writing horizontally.

6.  Tablets
were divided
into sections.
 This one was read
from top to bottom
and then to the back
side, then from left to
right.
 This one describes the
acquisition of 180 iku
of land.
 It also tells how the
iku are separated into
4 fields.

7.  The
clay tablets
could be reused
just by scraping it
clean.
 If they wanted
them to be
permanent they
would bake them
in an oven to
harden them.

8.  Just
as, if not
more,
important as it
is today.
 Messy
cuneiform
would be
impossible to
read.

9.  The
school was usually a privately owned
home called The Tablet House.
 The only supplies students needed was their
reed stylus and clay tablets.
 Students mostly focused on practicing writing
in proper handwriting and learning
vocabulary.
 Higher level learning involved studying the
roots of their own civilization.

10.  In
1835, an English
army officer named
Henry Rawlinson
found these
inscriptions on a
cliff in Persia.
 On the cliff the
same text was
written in three
languages: Old
Persian, Babylonian,
and Elamite.
He translated the
Persian and then
worked on the
Babylonian. In 16 years
he was able to read 200
Babylonian symbols.