1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...

Writing, laws, cities, and science—these and other innovations were devised by the enterprising peoples living in Sumer, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, some 5,000 years ago. High ...

The Ziggurat of Ur, a temple (partially reconstructed) from the Ancient Sumerian city of Ur, now modern day Iraq. Ancient Sumer was one of the first major civilisations. This means that the Ancient ...

CHICAGO One of the stars of the Oriental Institute’s new show, “Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond,” is a clay tablet that dates from around 3200 B.C. On it, ...

When people living in southern Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq) toward the end of the 4th millennium BC created documents by inscribing cuneiform characters on clay tablets, they took the first step in ...

The Epic of Gilgamesh, known as the oldest story in history, is thought to have been written in the early 2nd millennium BC, with the original being even older, in the 4th millennium BC. Journalist ...

Miguel Civil, the world’s leading expert in the earliest known written language, died on Jan. 13 at age 92. The scholar at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute was described as understanding ...

The ruins of the Ancient Sumerian city of Ur, a huge Neolithic (New Stone Age) city. Ancient Sumer was one of the first major civilisations. This means the Ancient Sumerians were a group of people who ...