Miguel Civil, a scholar and researcher at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, was a leading expert on the Sumerian language, the earliest known written language. “No one has known Sumerian ...

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 ...

For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the origins of the world’s first writing system. Now, a study by Italian researchers reveals that some of these earliest proto-cuneiform signs may have ...

Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B. C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus; through August 17, 2003 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. Joan Aruz (ed). Art of the First ...