While excavating a site in Turkey, archaeologists have discovered a small 3,500-year-old cuneiform tablet that may shed light on lifestyles during the Late Bronze Age.
Cuneiform, one of the oldest forms of writing, was used throughout the ancient Near East.
The cuneiform script recorded the Sumerian, Akkadian, and other languages of Mesopotamia, the region where the world's earliest known civilization developed, located today in modern-day Iraq. Highly educated scribes created the characteristic cuneiform characters using reeds on clay tablets.
The newly discovered tile, dating from the 15th century BC, appears to have served as a receipt. Written in Akkadian cuneiform, the ancient inscription describes the purchase of a large amount of furniture.
"We believe that this tablet, which weighs 28 grams, will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age," Mehmet Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in a statement.
The size of the tile is only 4.2 cm by 3.5 cm and its thickness is 1.6 cm. The researchers discovered the artefact in front of the gate of the ancient city of Alalakh, known today as the archaeological mound and site of Tell Athana.
But perhaps more surprisingly, the small tile was found in July during restoration work following devastating earthquakes. After the natural disaster, archaeology became a form of recovery and healing for the community, said excavation leader Dr. Murat Akar.
The British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley made the first excavations of the city of Alallah in the 1930s. He discovered an archive of cuneiform tablets in a fortress that was adjacent to the gate, said Dr. Jacob Lauinger, associate professor of Assyriology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
"The new tile came either from the same tile archive or from another unexcavated archive in the fort, and at some point, it was washed up to the gate," says Lauinger.
Lauinger and Zeynep Türker, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University, are currently translating and studying the tablet along with Akar, who is an associate professor in the Department of Archeology at Mustafa Kemal University in Turkey.
The findings will be published in a peer-reviewed study led by Türker, but for now, their translation of the tile reveals the purchase of some 200 or more wooden tables, chairs and stools. While other tablets from Alalakh mention furniture production at the site, nothing has reached the scale of that listed on the newly discovered tile, Lauinger says. | BGNES
