Cuneiform tablet: student exercise tablet

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lenticular clay tablet was used to help scribes learn to write the Sumerian and Akkadian languages using the triangle-like cuneiform (literally, "wedge-shaped") script. To learn a word or sign, the teacher would write the form on the obverse, and the student would then repeat the exercise on the reverse. Such elementary exercises were often completed on tablets that were small and round, easily fitting into the palm of a hand. On this tablet, the name of the deity Urash was copied six times. (Additional signs seem to be present on the reverse but are too damaged to read.) Two signs were used to write this name: the first star-like sign on the left is a sign that was used to indicate the name of a divine being. The second sign could be used to write the syllable ib or ip; here it stands for Urash, the name of a deity. Cuneiform signs were used to render both words and sounds, and a single sign could signify multiple words and/or sounds. The study of cuneiform writing, therefore, required the mastery of several hundred signs and their different meanings.

Ancient Near Eastern Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art cares for approximately 7,000 works ranging in date from the eighth millennium B.C. through the centuries just beyond the emergence of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Objects in the collection were created by people in the area that today comprises Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, the Eastern Mediterranean coast, Yemen, and Central Asia. From the art of some of the world's first cities to that of great empires, the department's holdings illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship as well as the profound interconnections, cultural and religious diversity, and lasting legacies that characterize the ancient art of this vast region.

Metropolitan Museum of Art