Lot 38A
Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian period, ca. 1900 to 1700 BCE. A lovely gathering of four hand-built clay tablets that contain several lines of one of the earliest forms of structured writing in human civilization. Each tablet displays several lines of cuneiform text formed by impressing a sharpened stick into the clay just before being placed inside of a kiln. The first tablet features rounded corners as well as ten lines of inscribed text. The second tablet displays 16 lines of text. The third tablet has 15 lines of text and concerns a letter to an individual named Kanda. The largest is an administrative record that exhibits a gridded template as a ledger for the distribution of various foodstuffs for days 6 through 15 of month 9. Lucite display stands for photography purposes only. Size of largest: 2" W x 3.125" H (5.1 cm x 7.9 cm)
Cuneiform script is one of the oldest known writing systems in the world, made using a reed as a stylus and scratching wedge-shaped marks onto clay tablets. Early cuneiform was pictographic, but in the 3rd millennium BCE it shifted to the more abstract form you see here. These cuneiform tablets are some of the roughly 2 million known from this culture; of these, between 30,000 and 100,000 have been translated. The earliest translations came in 1836 from the work of French scholar Eugene Burnouf, and by the 1850s multiple scholars were able to produce similar translations, meaning the language had been deciphered.
Provenance: East Coast collection, New York Gallery, New York City, New York, USA, acquired before 2010
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#137746
- Condition: Largest two tablets repaired from multiple pieces, with chips and light adhesive residue along break lines; smaller two tablets are intact and very good. All have nicks and abrasions to faces and peripheries, with minor softening to some inscribed characters, and light encrustations. Nice earthen deposits throughout.
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