The Epic of Gilgamesh, known as the oldest story in history, is thought to have been written in the early 2nd millennium BC, with the original being even older, in the 4th millennium BC. Journalist ...

1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...

The Sumerians are often credited with creating one of the world’s earliest civilizations, developing cities, writing, and complex social systems in southern Mesopotamia. Yet despite their importance, ...

The ancient Sumerians developed this writing system more than 5,000 years ago. Tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets still await translation. It’s not a language. It’s not an alphabet, either, ...

The specific tablet that has caused such excitement is a school text listing kings who ruled at the end of the third millennium BC. Other known copies of this same royal list also include Gilgamesh, ...

When people living in southern Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq) toward the end of the 4th millennium BC created documents by inscribing cuneiform characters on clay tablets, they took the first step in ...

Carved in the limestone of a desert cliff in Egypt is a 5,250-year-old tableau of a victorious ruler, perhaps the so-called King Scorpion -- whose exploits, previously the stuff of myth and legend, ...

A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and ...