Uruk and the Birth of Writing

Uruk grows to a size the world had never seen: several square kilometres of building, the temple platforms of Eanna, canals and suburbs. Such an economy needs accounting, and scribes begin to press marks into wet clay—so many sheep, so much barley, issued to whom. At first these are pictures; then conventional wedges, which can record not only a count but a name and a word. Out of a warehouse notation grows writing—and with it the power to carry memory beyond the span of a human life.