Cuneiform

My grandfather says that in the old days, nobody knew how to write. Writing started when my ancestors needed a way to keep records on what had happened from year to year. Like how much grain each farmer had grown? And how much different people got as their shares? And how many sheep and cattle they had, how many animals died and how many were born? And how much of everything was given to the gods? We started out by drawing little pictures that represented words. Like this picture, it represented a star. Well, over time, people started writing faster. And the picture of the star changed to this. And eventually this. Now our writing looks more like symbols than pictures. We combine the symbols to make words and names. See? Here's how you write urdu's name. Udu is my pet sheep, by the way. Our style of writing is called cuneiform. That means wedge shaped. All the symbols are made up of little wedge marks. That's because we use a tool called a stylus to write. We cut them from reeds that grow along the river. We'll never run out of those. We write on clay tablets. There's plenty of clay around too. All we have to do is pat some clay into a pancake. Then cut a stylus. Press the end of the stylus into the wet clay and start writing. When we're finished, we put the tablet in the sun to dry and harden. Then the tablets last forever. Well, almost. Writing helped make our civilization powerful. Because we could keep records, we could make plans for the future. That's what my dad does. He works for the king. His job is to tell the farmers which fields to plant, and which crops to grow, and how much. So we're always sure that we'll have enough food for all of our people. And enough for the gods, too.