Kish tablet

Kish tablet
Map showing the extent of the Kish tablet
Limestone tablet from Kish (Sumer) with pictographic writing, c. 3500 BC – Ashmolean Museum
Geographical rangeIraq
PeriodUruk period (c. 3500–3350 BC)
Datesc. 3500 BC
Followed byNarmer Palette

The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish in modern Tell al-Uhaymir, Babylon Governorate, Iraq. A plaster cast of the tablet is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, while the original is housed at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.[1] It should not be confused with the Scheil dynastic tablet, which contains part of the Sumerian King List and is also sometimes called the Kish tablet.[2]

The proto-cuneiform signs on the Kish tablet are purely pictographic, and have not been deciphered or demonstrated to correspond to human language. It has been dated to the Uruk period (c. 3500–3200 BC).[3] Several thousand proto-cuneiform documents dating to Uruk IV and III periods (c. 3350–3000 BC) have been found in Uruk. The marks represent a transitional stage between proto-writing and the emergence of the partly syllabic writing of proper cuneiform writing . The proto-literate period of Egypt and Mesopotamia is taken to span c. 3500 – c. 2900 BC. The administrative texts of the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC), found among other places at Jemdet Nasr and Tell Uqair represent a further stage in the development from proto-cuneiform to cuneiform, but can still not be identified with Sumerian with certainty.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ [1]Henry Field, "The Field Museum-Oxford University Expedition to Kish, Mesopotamia, 1923–1929", Anthropology Leaflet, no. 28, 1929.
  2. ^ Scheil, Vincent (1911). "Les plus anciennes dynasties connues de Sumer-Accad". Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (in French). 55 (8): 606–620.
  3. ^ Hayes, John L., 1990 A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts, Undena Publications, p. 266
  4. ^ Woods, Christopher (2010), "The earliest Mesopotamian writing" (PDF), in Woods, Christopher (ed.), Visible language. Inventions of writing in the ancient Middle East and beyond, Oriental Institute Museum Publications, vol. 32, Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 33–50, ISBN 978-1-885923-76-9

Further reading

  • A. C. Moorhouse, The Triumph of the Alphabet: A History of Writing
  • Peter N. Stearns, The Encyclopedia of World History (2001), ISBN 978-0-395-65237-4.


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