• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

3,500-Year-Old Cuneiform Tablet Contains Ancient Shopping Receipt

July 24, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

A clay tablet engraved with what appears to be one of the world’s oldest known sales receipts has been discovered by archaeologists in southern Türkiye. Written in cuneiform, the ancient document dates back to the 15th century BCE and records the purchase of large quantities of wooden furniture.

Announcing the discovery, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Ersoy explained that researchers had come across the remarkable relic at Eski Alalah, in the southern province of Hatay. Also known as the Aççana Mound, the ancient site is located in the old city of Alalah, where workers stumbled upon the tablet during restoration works following an earthquake.

The oldest known writing system in the world, cuneiform was developed around 5,500 years ago and was used across ancient Mesopotamia for about three millennia. Formed by impressing reed styluses into clay, the text was adopted by cultures such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Sumerians, each of which had its own language.

According to Ersoy, the newly discovered sales slip appears to be written in Akkadian, which was the lingua franca of the world’s oldest Empire. Existing for a little more than a century, the Akkadian Empire had its capital at an unknown location along the banks of the Euphrates River, and its now-extinct dialect was the most ancient of the Semitic languages – which include Hebrew and Arabic.

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Linguists are currently working on deciphering the text, the first few lines of which document the sale and purchase of a large number of chairs, tables, and stools, along with information about the identities of the buyers and sellers. “We believe that this tablet, weighing 28 grams [1 ounce], will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” said Ersoy in a statement.

Advertisement

Curiously, this is far from the first mundane report to have been found in the Akkadian language. In 2018, researchers came across a similar clay tablet scribbled with a complaint from a disgruntled customer who was apparently unhappy with the quality of copper that he had purchased. 

And while scholars often struggle to decipher the messages imprinted onto these ancient tablets, the task of interpreting cuneiform may be about to get a whole lot easier thanks to the development of an artificial intelligence system that can translate Akkadian and other related languages with 97 percent accuracy. Reading between the lines, however, is an altogether different matter.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canada’s Conservatives pledge big spending, deficit reduction in election platform
  2. Evolito’s electric motors look set to take off in aerospace where YASA left off in automotive
  3. TWIS: Newly Discovered CRISPR-Like Systems May Be Used To Edit Human Genomes, Reconstructed Face Of 50,000-Year-Old Ancient Ancestor, And Much More This Week
  4. Can Peacocks Fly?

Source Link: 3,500-Year-Old Cuneiform Tablet Contains Ancient Shopping Receipt

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • What Would You Reach If You Kept Digging Under Antarctica?
  • First Visible Time Crystals Ever Made Have Astonishing Complexity And Practical Potential
  • “Something Undeniably Special”: The Chi Cygnids, A New Five-Yearly Meteor Shower, Peak This Month
  • A 200-Meter-Tall Event We Didn’t See Sent Signals Through The Earth For Nine Whole Days
  • Why Are So Many Volcanoes Underwater?
  • In 1977, A Hybrid Was Born In A Zoo. What It Taught Us Could Save One Of The Planet’s Most Endangered Species
  • How To Park A Dangerous Asteroid So It Doesn’t Bite You Later
  • New Study Finds Evidence For What Every Parent Knows About Bluey
  • New Breakthrough Takes Plastic Garbage And Turns It Into Tool For Carbon Capture
  • NASA To Hold Press Conference About New Perseverance Rover Discovery Tomorrow
  • Strange Halos Have Formed Around Barrels Of Chemicals Dumped Off LA’s Coast Over 50 Years Ago
  • As We Grow Older, Our Music Taste Appears To Narrow To Fewer Songs
  • Stinky Seaweed Blob On Florida Beaches Thwarts Baby Sea Turtles’ Dash To The Ocean
  • NASA Is Set To Lock Up Four Volunteers For 378-Day Mars Simulation Study
  • For The First Time, A Vital Oceanic Upwelling Of Nutrient-Rich Water Failed To Emerge In 2025
  • One Of The Largest Crocs Ever “Terrorized Dinosaurs” With Teeth The Size Of Bananas
  • US Congress Is Holding Another UFO Hearing Today – Watch Live
  • Yes, Flying Snakes Do Exist – Sort Of
  • Meet The Bumblebee Bat: The World’s Smallest Bat Is The Last Of Its Kind
  • Did A Giant Planet Sculpt Fomalhaut’s Stunning Ring Into Its Squashed Shape?
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version