Tablets were the most common medium for writing in Mesopotamia. Styluses were impressed upon wet clay which, when sun dried or baked, would harden and preserve the text. Tablets were used for official letters and missives, economic archival texts, legal texts, religious documents and the recording of omen lists to educational texts and poetry. The longue durée of the clay tablet’s use as a primary writing form and the durability of baked clay has led to an astounding number of tablets to survive to this day. Tablet here is the distinct and singular category of the baked clay text.There is no differentiation between the genre of the tablet but simply the materiality and dimensions of the object, be it lenticular of rectangular.Other forms of writing such as writing boards, prisms and cylinders are in categories of their own. Likewise the clay envelope casings that tablets were transported in are found in the envelope category. Similarly the category of ‘Tablet & Envelope’ is for tablets that have survived with their particular envelopes – in both extant and fragmented states – from antiquity. ‘Tablet’ is also distinct from the ‘Tag’ category as, although the objects can near identical lenticular inscribed clay objects, tags represent a specific administrative function and evolutionary point in the development of writing.
| Name | Language |
|---|---|
| لوح | Arabic |
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@misc{CDLI2026tablet,
note = {[Online; accessed 2026-01-05]},
author = {{CDLI contributors}},
year = {2026},
month = {jan 5},
title = {tablet - {Artifact} {Types}},
url = {https://cdli.earth/artifact-types/4},
howpublished = {https://cdli.earth/artifact-types/4},
}
TY - ELEC AU - CDLI contributors DA - 2026/1/5/ PY - 2026 ID - temp_id_758344718121 M1 - 2026/1/5/ TI - tablet - Artifact Types UR - https://cdli.earth/artifact-types/4 ER -