Small tablets made out of clay were used from late 4th millennium BC onwards as a writing medium in Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations. Sumerian cuneiform characters were engraved on the tables using a stylus. Later the tablets were left to dry or even fired in a kiln. (5th millennium BC – 4th millennium BC – 3rd millennium BC - other millennia) // Events Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia (40th century BC); Sumerian hegemony in Mesopotamia, with the invention of writing, base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, the wheel, and the potters wheel, 4000... Sumer (or Shumer, Sumeria, Shinar, native ki-en-gir) formed the southern part of Mesopotamia from the time of settlement by the Sumerians until the time of Babylonia. ... This is an article about the ancient middle eastern region. ... Relief of Suppiluliuma II, last known king of the Hittite Empire “Hittites” is the conventional English-language term for an ancient people who spoke an Indo-European language and established a kingdom centered in Hattusa (Hittite Hattushash) where today is the village of Boğazköy in north-central Turkey... Map of Minoan Crete The Minoans were a pre-Hellenic Bronze Age civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea, prior to Helladic or Mycenaean culture (i. ... Mycenaean Greece, the last phase of Bronze Age Greece, is the Late Helladic Bronze Age civilization of ancient Greece. ... Cuneiform script The Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. ...

Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were also at the root of first libraries. Quaternary clay in Estonia. ... For alternate uses see: Archive (disambiguation). ... Modern-style library In the traditional sense of the word, a library is a collection of books and periodicals. ...

In the Minoan/Mycenean cultures writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. Tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.

See also

• Linear A
• Linear B
• Hittite language