Savitauluja

Savitauluja are clay tablets inscribed with writing, primarily associated with ancient Mesopotamia. These tablets served as the primary medium for written communication and record-keeping for several millennia. The earliest known examples date back to the late Neolithic period, around the 4th millennium BCE, with more complex systems emerging during the Early Dynastic period.

The writing systems commonly found on savitauluja include cuneiform, a script characterized by wedge-shaped marks pressed into the soft clay with a stylus. This script was used to record a vast range of information, from economic transactions, legal codes, and administrative documents to literature, religious texts, and personal letters. The durability of clay, when baked, has allowed for the preservation of an immense number of these tablets, providing invaluable insights into ancient Mesopotamian societies.

The process of creating a savitaulu involved preparing moist clay, shaping it into a tablet, and then impressing the cuneiform symbols using a reed stylus. Tablets could be used for temporary notes, in which case they were unbaked and could be recycled, or for permanent records, which were then baked for durability. Archaeological excavations have uncovered hundreds of thousands of these artifacts, making them a cornerstone of our understanding of ancient history, languages, and cultures of the Near East.