Tristan Hughes

Plants.

Carpet, the whole works.

A cup of coffee for you as well.

And we wanted to make you feel right at home for this topic.

Absolutely relaxed and happy to talk to you.

And to talk about cuneiform, which is, and forgive me if I'm incorrect, but this is the oldest writing script known to archaeology.

And to set the scene, Irving, which languages, which cultures, which civilizations are we talking about that used cuneiform as their writing system?

And you get its survival on so many different things.

I mean, predominantly the clay tablets, isn't it?

But also, you mentioned the Persians there, the time of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and you have great stone inscriptions carved into mountainsides, and what is one of the languages they used at that time?

It's cuneiform.

So you see it surviving on several different, very durable materials, actually.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly so.

It's so interesting.

And with that case, with the Persian and the Behistun inscriptions, so that's the first millennium BC, and that's several thousand years after the creation of cuneiform.

But I think it's testament to that example alone, to the endurance of that writing script over all of those millennia.

I must ask, before we delve into the origins of cuneiform, the majority of cuneiform inscriptions that survive are on clay.

Yes.

Why clay?