Details

LOT 0169

Mesopotamian Pictographic Tablet Relating to Cattle

URUK III, CIRCA 3000 B.C.

2 1/4 in. (130 grams, 56 mm wide).

A bifacial pillow-shaped clay tablet bearing pictographs relating to cattle to both principal faces; repaired.

Provenance

Specialised collection of cuneiform texts, the property of a London gentleman and housed in London before 1992.
Thence by descent to family members.
Examined by Professor Wilfrid George Lambert FBA (1926-2011), historian, archaeologist, and specialist in Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The collection is exceptional for the variety of types, including some very rare and well preserved examples.

Footnotes

Early writing was used primarily as a means of recording economic data. At the end of the 4th millennium B.C., written language developed in Mesopotamia as pictographs, later evolving into abstract forms called cuneiform. Pictographs were drawn in the clay with a pointed implement. Circular impressions alongside the pictographs represented numerical symbols. Cuneiform (meaning wedge-shaped) script was written by pressing a reed pen or stylus with a wedge-shaped tip into a clay tablet.