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These two cuneiform tablets are by far the oldest objects in the Grolier Club Library. Cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing, invented by the Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BCE. It was largely replaced by the Phoenician alphabet in the first millennium BCE and was extinct by the second century CE.
The tablet on the left is a typical example of a “messenger” tablet, giving an account of rations for various foodstuffs (beer, bread, onions, oil, and potash) transported between cities by an envoy for the royal administration. The tablet on the right is an administrative record of several plant products received by an official, and the amount of oil derived from them.
In 2012, these two tablets were translated for the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), a joint project of UCLA, the University of Oxford, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin.