Researchers have deciphered a recently discovered 3,500 year old clay tablet, to find that it's actually a receipt, on which someone recorded a furniture sale.
Written in cuneiform - an ancient Middle Eastern script - the record details a purchase of wooden tables, chairs and stools by an unknown buyer. Measuring just over an inch and a half long and weighing less than an ounce, the tablet dates back to the 15th century B.C.E. and was found in Reyhanlı, a southern Turkish city near the border with Syria.
The tablet’s list of furniture was written in the extinct language of Akkadian, one of the oldest known Semitic languages, reports Live Science. It was spoken from the third millennium B.C.E. until the first century C.E., and scholars first succeeded in deciphering it in the 19th century. Akkadian was written in cuneiform, a system invented by the Sumerians that involves engraving pictograms and symbols into clay with a reed stylus. Akkadian’s specific script contained 600 signs; some of the signs stood for entire words, some for single syllables.
Cuneiform is the world’s oldest known form of writing. It was characterized by distinct, often wedge-shaped gouges cut into moist clay. Many surviving examples of the practice are - like the recently found tablet - administrative records of sale.
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