Antiquities

Lot 3510    Session 11 (9.30am Thursday)    Antiquities

Estimate $750
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $1,000

MESOPOTAMIA, old Babylonian Terracotta Cuneiform Tablet, from Mesopotamia c.2nd millenium B.C.; dimensions, 51mm high x 37mm wide, and 20mm thick. Very fine and very rare example.

The piece has extensive traces of an old ink collection number at base of tablet coming once from a museum or private collection. The oldest known written language, cuneiform, first used by the ancient peoples of the Near East over 5000 years ago, is composed of a series of wedge-shaped incisions made with a sharpened reed stylus. This script was adopted by all the major civilizations of Mesopotamia for recording their distinct languages, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians. Clay tablets were the preferred media for everyday writing because they could either be easily recycled or, if a permanent record was required, fired in a kiln and preserved. The earliest recorded inscriptions are not myths or histories, but rather banal economic transactions and accounting documents. Later, one of the most famous written works of the ancient world, Hammurabi's code, was recorded in the cuneiform script. While these marks may appear obscure and mysterious to our eyes, scholars have made much progress in deciphering cuneiform after discovering inscriptions on the Behistun Rock, a cliff in western Iran. Much like the Rosetta Stone, the Behistun Inscription contained the same text written in three different languages (Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite), all of which utilized the cuneiform system of writing. Due to the resemblance of these languages to modern ones, scholars were able to crack the code. This terracotta tablet reveals just how intricate a system of writing cuneiform was. In the hands of a talented scribe, a remarkable amount of information could be squeezed into a relatively small space and yet still remain legible. Both the front and back of this tablet have been written on, containing a total of thirteen lines of text. Like most tablets that survive, the text relates to administrative matters.