3,500-Year-Old Tablet with a furniture list
Unearthed ancient tablet dating back some 3,500 years with a primitive cuneiform writing that preserves a furniture list.
The tablet was discovered during excavations at the archaeological site of Alalakh, in what is now the Turkish province of Hatay, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism stated in a note. This ancient city flourished in the 2nd millennium BC as an urban settlement of the Amorites, a Bronze Age people from the Levant, an eastern Mediterranean region, who spoke a Semitic language.
The remains of the city have formed a large mound that now covers an area of about 22 hectares (approximately 55 acres).
The clay tablet found at Alalakh is relatively small, measuring about 1.6 by 1.4 inches, with a thickness of 0.6 inches and a weight of about 1 ounce. Experts believe it dates back to around the 15th century BC. Interestingly, the tablet contains text written in cuneiform characters, an ancient script generally considered the oldest known writing system.
Developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia (an ancient region centered in present-day Iraq) more than 5,000 years ago, cuneiform is not a language in itself. Instead, it is a script that was used to write various languages of the ancient Near East, primarily Sumerian and Akkadian. Created to write the Sumerian language, the script was later adapted for Akkadian and subsequently for other languages, such as Hittite.
The tablet found at the archaeological site of Alalakh is an example of Akkadian cuneiform. Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was widely spoken in the ancient Near East from the 3rd millennium BC until it began to be replaced by Aramaic around the 8th century BC. Akkadian is the first known Semitic language.
Experts have examined the writing on the tablet from Alalakh and discovered that it contains a record of a "large quantity of furniture purchases," stated Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism, in a post on X.
"We believe that this tablet... will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the late Bronze Age,"
Ersoy said.
"We work meticulously to transmit the rich heritage of Anatolia to future generations."
Linguists continue to study the cuneiform writing on the tablet, whose first lines report the purchase of large quantities of wooden tables, chairs, and stools, as well as information about the buyers and sellers.
source: https://x.com/MehmetNuriErsoy/status/1815285462656753712
