Cuneiform

Published: April 29, 2017, 3 a.m.

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The Egyptians thought literacy was divine; a benefaction which came from the baboon-faced god Thoth. In fact the earliest known script \\u2013 \\u201ccuneiform\\u201d \\u2013 came from Uruk, a Mesopotamian settlement on the banks of the Euphrates in what is now Iraq. What did it say? As Tim Harford describes, cuneiform wasn\\u2019t being used for poetry, or to send messages to far-off lands. It was used to create the world\\u2019s first accounts. And the world\\u2019s first written contracts, too.

Producer: Ben Crighton\\nEditors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon

(Image: Close-up of clay tablet, Credit: Kotomiti Okuma/Shutterstock)

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