Describe the features of Mesopotamian writing …

(i) The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. - lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south.

(ii) Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in one hand. He would carefully smoothen its surfaces.

(iii) Once the surface dried, signs could not be pressed onto a tablet : so each transaction, however minor, required a separate written tablet.

(iv) By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian. Writing was now used not only for keeping records, but also for making dictionaries, giving legal validity to land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land.