Clay Orbs and the Origins of Writing

Writing, we assume, evolved from simpler systems of signs. After all, there are even today peoples in the world that have no writing, but do regularly mark objects with signs that indicate ownership, or a connection to some particular god or ancestor. In Mesopotamia, where the oldest writing seems to have arisen, the precursor signs were accounting marks. Our oldest writing is lists: 8 sheep, 5 bushels of grain, 3 slaves.

But the weird clay artifacts archaeologists call "envelopes" hint at an even simpler stage. These small balls or packets of clay, dating to around 3400 BCE, have varying numbers and shapes of smaller clay objects inside. The reigning explanation is that Sumerian scribes did their calculation of what had been paid on something like an abacus, and then to record the transaction they swept up all the counters, wrapped them in clay and put the resulting ball on a shelf to save for reference.

They also marked the ball on the outside with symbols indicating the contents. As writing developed, these marks grew ever more elaborate, until they eventually had far more information than could be conveyed by the objects in the envelope:

A 3,300-year-old clay ball found at a site in Mesopotamia named Nuzi had 49 pebbles and a cuneiform text containing a contract commanding a shepherd to care for 49 sheep and goats.

Christopher Woods of the Oriental Institute in Chicago recently presented the results of CT scanning of a wide sample of these envelopes. The x-rays showed that the objects inside "come in 14 different shapes, including spheres, pyramids, ovoids, lenses and cones." The study also showed that the outsides of the envelopes were marked with fine grooves, which may indicate that the envelopes were wrapped with string, perhaps another way of conveying information.

I find it quite wonderful that with these objects we can get so close to the moment of writing's invention.