Cuneiform tablet, Southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), c 2050 BCE, Rare Books collection

Cuneiform writing, developed by the ancient culture of Sumer, was one of the world’s first scripts. It was written on clay tablets using a wedged stick (cunea is Latin for ‘wedge’); the tablets were then sun-dried or fired. The earliest tablets (c 3400 BCE) record economic transactions. This tablet records taxes paid in sheep and goats in the tenth month of the 46th year of Shulgi, second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur.