Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq. Sumerian was a non-Semitic language which is now extinct.

This tablet has writing on both sides detailing how Enlil-izu and Ahi-Sin gave a temple a number of animals to cover 4 months dues. The scribe, Nur-Sin, selected the wet clay and wrote the text with a blunt reed, and then the tablet was baked.

Cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of written expression and so represents a huge leap forward by human kind. This writing system was in use for more than 30 centuries and was finally replaced by alphabetic writing during the Roman era. It was not until 1857 that the decipherment of cuneiform was completed.

Large numbers of these tablets were on the antiquities market c. 1900 and this one was bought by George Titus Barham (1859-1937). When he died he left the tablet, and the rest of his diverse collection, to the London Borough of Wembley and it formed the foundation of the Brent Museum.