sun-dried clay tablets

Ingredients

clay

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

Clay tablets were generally sun-dried and covered with cuneiform signs on all sides, including obverse, reverse, bottom, and side edges (p. 18). For smaller quadrangular tablets like Ashm 1911-0173, holes were pierced through the clay—sometimes as a double hole on the left side or a single hole running the full width—to allow a string to pass through, attaching the tablet as a tag to a container such as a basket (p. 20).

Evidence

"Tablet used as a tag for a basket of tablets with accounts. Umma, Ur III, twenty-first century BCE, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Ashm 1911-0173"

Remarks

In the Mesopotamian context, clay served as a three-dimensional medium for negative script. While not paper, these tablets represent a significant precursor in manuscript cohesion. Sample Ashm 1911-0173 illustrates how tablets could be virtually or physically 'bound' to baskets using strings (p. 20).