24: The invention of writing & the Late Uruk industrial revolution, 3400-3100 BCE (Babel & Nisaba)

Guest: Kelten, Kirra

First, a familiar story that just happens to involve monumental construction projects, clay bricks, and universal language. Behold!

Then, we visit the city of Unug (Uruk, Erech, Warka, etc), for which the period is named, and take a tour through the construction and demolition of increasingly monumental edifices in the office complex where written language and architectural columns were invented. What did it take to build all this?

Then, a quick treatment of Uruk pottery production. Wheeled vehicles are much younger (and wine bottles are much older) than you think they are!

Then, at long last, the bureaucrats in the E-anna temple complex finally get around to inventing writing! We take a stroll through the long prehistory of administrative record-keeping, the means by which young scribes learned to write, and the fundamental shift in world history precipitated by the adoption of cuneiform.

Finally, we close with a hymn to Nisaba, goddess of writing (and cereal agriculture, of course)— good woman, chief scribe of An, record-keeper of Enlil, wise sage of the gods!

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Works cited