Hundreds of clay tablets marked in cuneiform have been found in excavations of the Sumerian city of Uruk (in present-day Iraq). Though the tablets date from roughly 3000 B.C., the writing on them uses relatively few pictographs; instead, numerous
The earliest of the tokens were simple in form—small cones, spheres, and pyramids—and they were often inscribed. In 1966, a hollow tablet containing several of these tokens was discovered, and more than 100 additional tablets, which are now recognized as sealed envelopes of clay, have since been found. Later envelopes are also inscribed with impressions of tokens in the outer clay, signaling exactly what each envelope contained. …
The token system, essentially a system of three-dimensional nouns, was replaced in about 3100 B.C. by a system of marks on clay tablets. A few centuries later, this latter system was to display the first use of numerals, where simple marks coded the concepts of one, two, and so forth. The eventual evolution of this system into mature writing, Schmandt-Besserat suggests, can be seen in the following example: At first it took two ovoid tokens to record two jars of oil. A little later, it took two markings on a clay tablet to achieve this—one mark, using the outline of the old token, to record the customary unit measure for oil, the jarful, and a second mark to convey the numeral: two oil jars. Eventually, it took three signs on the tablet, one for the numeral 2, one for the standard jarful, and a new symbol that denoted oil itself. With three such signs, an abstract and flexible written form had arrived.
Which one of the following, if true, would most call into question Schmandt-Besserat's theory mentioned in
The more than 100 clay envelopes discovered at archaeological sites along the Jordan come in many different dimensions, thicknesses, and styles of composition.
Different sizes/styles of envelope have no clear impact on the theory.
It was customary for villagers who performed services for another person to receive in return a record of a promise of agricultural products or crafted objects as compensation.
Weakens by raising an alternate hypothesis. Maybe the envelopes were not recording contributions to a temple – they could have been recording goods promised to a villager in exchange for that villager’s services.
The tablets marked in cuneiform dating after 3000 B.C. do not seem to function as records of villagers' contributions to a temple-based pool of goods.
The fact tablets at least several hundred years later (and maybe even over a thousand years later) might have been used for a different purpose has no impact. The theory concerns the purpose of certain inscribed envelopes that contained clay tokens, not the purpose of different items hundreds of years later. Although we know that the inscriptions on the envelopes are “traceable to later, known inscriptions of farm products,” that simply means we know what the inscriptions represented. That doesn’t mean the purpose of those inscriptions must have been the same as whatever purpose people had for those inscriptions in a different context, many years later.
There is no archaeological evidence suggesting that the tokens in use from about 4000 B.C. to 3100 B.C. were necessarily meant to be placed in clay envelopes.
The theory doesn’t depend on the idea that the tokens must have been meant to be put into clay envelopes. Maybe the tokens could also be carried, handed over directly, put in a box. Regardless, we do know they could also be placed in envelopes. What matters is the purpose of the inscribed envelopes.
Villagers were required not only to contribute goods to central pools but also to contribute labor, which was regularly accounted for.
If anything, this strengthens the argument by confirming that villagers did indeed have to make contributions to temple-based pools.
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