Kish tablet

The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at Kish. It is dated to ca. 3500 BC (the beginning of the Early Bronze Age I). It is kept in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

It is inscribed with proto-cuneiform signs, and may be considered the oldest known written document. The writing is, however, still purely pictographic, and represents a transitional stage between proto-writing and the emergence of the partly syllabic writing of the cuneiform script proper. The "protoliterate period" of Egypt and Mesopotamia is taken to span about 3500 to 2900 BC. The Kish tablet is thus more accurately identified as the first document of the Mesopotamian protoliterate period. Several hundred documents dating to about the 32nd century BC have been found at Uruk. The first documents unequivocally written in the Sumerian language were found at Jemdet Nasr, dated to the 31st to 30th centuries BC (Stearns p. 25)

References

*A. C. Moorhouse, "The Triumph of the Alphabet: A History of Writing"
*Langdon, "Pictographic Inscriptions from Jemdet Nasr"
*Peter N. Stearns, "The Encyclopedia of World History" (2001), ISBN 978-0395652374.

ee also

*Uruk period
*proto-writing
*History of writing
*Narmer Palette
*Warka Vase