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Items tagged with: cuneiform

I've been collecting interesting examples of information organisation in history, focusing on non-Western civilisations. I came across this example of an ancient Mesopotamian spreadsheet! It records wages paid to temple workers in 1295 BCE.

#History #AncientHistory #Cuneiform #Mesopotamia #CognitiveHistory
Black-and-white image of a clay tablet with horizontal and vertical lines forming what looks like a familiar spreadsheet. Most of the text, written in cuneiform, is in the rightmost column. There are also cuneiform signs in the cells.
Hand-drawn version of the table in the previous image. The cuneiform signs are much more legible. Source: Robson, E. (2003). Tables and tabular formatting in Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria, 2500 BCE-50 CE. In The history of mathematical tables: From Sumer to spreadsheets, 19-47.
#history #ancienthistory #cognitivehistory #mesopotamia #cuneiform

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