Dr. Irving Finkel

And in fact, if you look...

at a list of early pictographs and compare it with the sort of drawings that children do when they're about two and a half or three when they first try to reduce the universe around them to recognizable symbols there's something common so if a child draws a teapot it will be a bit like a pictographic sign to represent the vessel that you might have on an early tablet

In a world where swords were sharp.

It's a bit trifle anachronistic, but we can let that go.

I do recognise that tablet.

So it's made of, firstly, we can see very high quality clay, right?

And it's the kind of clay that the pictures which are in it are sharp and well-defined.

And it's been ruled into boxes, horizontal.

So it's some kind of administrative document where items are listed together with quantities of them.

And each message, so to speak, which is part of the whole, is put in a ruled box.

so that it could be read in sequence.

And it's a very orderly bookkeeping matter.

I mean, there's nothing chaotic about it.

There's nothing improvised about it.

It's probably about 2800, something of that kind.

I'm not sure exactly when.

But it is part of a long tradition

of impeccable bookkeeping in terms of the design, the form, the characters that are drawn there, the numbers and the accuracy of it.

Because as time goes by, many of these tablets where people are forced to write down the quantities, on the back they have the total.

So there's none of this winging it and saying about 56 or something.