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Writing was invented in southern Mesopotamia, in the ancient kingdom of Sumer, sometime before 3,000 BCE. Cuneiform, the type of writing seen in column 6 of this slide, was a development from earlier 'logographic' writing, in which signs stood for…

The Sumerian King List is the name given to a traditional canon of the early kings of Mesopotamia, thought by some scholars to have been composed in the time of Utu-hegal, a king of the city of Uruk who restored Sumerian independence after the…

The earliest writing was not on paper, but on clay tablets. Instead of a pen, scribes used an instrument called a stylus that was triangular in cross-section. They would press the tip of the stylus into the clay to make the triangular portions of the…