Desk Accessories
Mesopotamian contract paperweight
CB500004
This paperweight is inspired by a sales act found in Shuruppak.
Writing was born in Sumer and Elam out of the need to record the wealth of the cities.
In the following centuries, scribes improved the invention. Around 2600 BC, writing was sufficiently developed to spawn the first known examples of bureaucracy. This sales act is one example; it was written in Shuruppak, an ancient pre-flood city, the cradle of Neo-Sumerian.
