(CNN) — Researchers have uncovered links between the precursor to the world’s oldest writing system and the mysterious, intricate designs left behind by engraved cylindrical seals that were rolled ...

Many of the fragments bore cuneiform hieroglyphs, and over the years scholars had managed to reassemble parts of some tablets, deciphering for the first time these records of daily life in Assyria of ...

In late December I recommended one of my favorite recent books off my reading list – recent in this case meaning when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. That was Empires of the ...

More than 5,000 years ago, the world’s oldest known writing system emerged in what is now Iraq, establishing the country as the epicenter of recorded human history. […] ...

CHICAGO One of the stars of the Oriental Institute’s new show, “Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond,” is a clay tablet that dates from around 3200 B.C. On it, ...

Schoolchild’s homework in Greek on a wax tablet, Egypt, 2nd century AD (copyright the British Library) LONDON — A 2,000-year-old wax tablet bears inscriptions of the Greek homework of an Egyptian ...