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.