Uruk Proto-Cuneiform Tablets

Anonymous / tradition · c. 3400-3100 BC, with the earliest substantial writing conventionally assigned to the Uruk IV phase, c. 3350-3200 BC · Uruk (Iraq) · administrative

composition: secure

witness: in situ proto-cuneiform tablets from Uruk, chiefly the Eanna precinct, Uruk IV-III phases

Writing began as an accounting technology serving Uruk's temple and palace institutions, whose exact organizational structure remains debated, recording grain, labor, and livestock long before it preserved continuous narrative or ordinary sentences, and the linguistic content behind even its administrative signs remains limited and difficult to reconstruct.