Images

In this food issue list, "rations" is written by combining a human head a bowl (a triangular object in front of the head). This combination, in later Sumerian texts, means "to eat". The triangular object was the regular representation of...

On this clay tablet, barley appears 4 times, depicted as a single stalk with ears at the top. Emmer wheat is different from barley, by writing numbers with extra strokes. Three different types of numerical symbol were used. From Mesopotamia...

Apprentice scribes learned the writing system through lists of related signs, like this one dealing with place names. The tablet was partially repaired from fragments; there 3 columns of inscriptions on either side. From Jemdet Nasr, Southern...

Adult workers received standard rations of 30 to 40 pints of barley per month while children received 20; the barley was distributed as rations to about 200 workmen and their children. This scribe was clearly highly trained in this art. From...

This almost square-shaped clay tablet records a Sumerian account of silver and other commodities. There are 8 columns of inscriptions; by this stage, the reed strokes are fully wedge-shaped and the writing could convey the Sumerian language...

These 2 unusual green schist stone tablets seem to belong together and record a land sale; it appears that there was a transaction, in which land was exchanged for various goods, with the carved figures representing the individuals involved...

On this clay tablet, the lines are read from left to right and the day numbers appear at the left side (days 1-5). Several different types of rations were issued, possibly bread. Each line mentions the name of the recipient or the destination...

This is the 11th tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The cuneiform text on this tablet is startlingly similar to the Biblical story of Noah and his ark in the Book of Genesis. When George Smith, an assistant in the British Museum first read...

An artist's impression of what a Greek hoplite may have looked like.

Statue of Hermes (Mercury) with winged sandals, holding his herald's staff. Formerly in the Farnese Collection in Rome. Roman, 2nd century CE, after a Greek original of the 4th century BCE the school of Praxiteles. (British Museum, London)