Maya writing: Did you mean...?

This carved limestone relief, dated 23 August 783 CE, depicts three scribes being presented as prisoners to a Maya ruler. The captives are identified as scribes by the stick-bundle the first one holds (the traditional implements of scribes...

Kapilavastu (“Place of Kapila”) is the name of the city where Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, l. c. 563-483 BCE) grew up and lived for the first 29 years of his life before leaving to pursue the spiritual path which led to his enlightenment...

This table is made of clay and was found in Southern Iraq (3100-3000 BCE). Early writing was used as a way to keep track of the administration and it was only in later years its uses evolved. Early writing in Mesopotamia was made by pressing...

Copy of funerary stela with inscription, Vira-Gambarogno, Ticino. 5th century BC. The name of the deceased reads from bottom to top: teromui kalui. Find our more: The Oldest Writing in Switzerland.

The ruins of San Gervasio — located on the island of Cozumel in Mexico — were once an important site of pilgrimage to Maya people who lived from c. 1000-1650 CE. A sanctuary of the Maya goddess Ix Chel used to be located at this location...

A relief of cuneiform writing from Assyria. Exhibited in the British Museum London.

Wooden writing-tablet, 1st-2nd century CE, from Londinium (Roman London). British Museum, London

A limestone relief slab depicting Seshat, the Egyptian goddess of writing. ca. 1919-1875 BCE. (Brooklyn Museum, USA).

This clay tablet is one of 12 tablets which were found near the temple of Tell Deir Alla in 1964. The inscriptions on the surface of the tablets are still unknown and this mysterious writing cannot be deciphered. Before 1200 BCE. From Al-Balqa...

A painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris showing Thomas Jefferson (right), Benjamin Franklin (left), and John Adams drafting the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776. (Virginia Historical Society, Library of Congress)