It is referred to as the cushion clay
tablet and it is believed to have been
made around 2600 BC. This tablet
shows the details of the transaction
of grains. The upper part means
135,000 liters.
This is the item in question: barley.
They drew it as it is.
The left side represents the terms
of the transaction. It says 37 months.
This tablet is a record that somebody
lent or borrowed 135,000 liters of
barley for a period of 37 months.
What, then, do these symbols mean?
According to research, the sound represented
by these symbols is coushem.
Unlike the other symbols found on
these ancient relics, the meaning
of these are a mystery.
The two signs in these early tablets,
coushem, are puzzling because
they don't mean anything.
Um, these two signs individually
each have a meaning but together
they don't seem to mean anything.
And so, it's been suggested quite
plausibly that this is somebody's name.
That somebody wrote these two signs
because the name sounded the same way.
A coom sign meaning something, and a shim sign
meaning something else but together
just somebody's name.
The phonetic symbols coo and shim
came together to form cooshim,
a symbol that represents a sound.
This marked the beginning of salavak writing.
It was the birth of rebus writing system.
A single example of rebus can be found
using a car and a cat. This representation,
however, does not mean a car and a cat.
The sounds of the words represented
by these pictographs, car and pet, could
be used to mean something completely
different. In this case, carpet.
These symbols, meaningless by
themselves, come together to form a word.
This type of writing system is known a rebus,
a representation of words in the form
of pictures or symbols.
In the modern era this concept
is seen as quite simple and basic
but for people in ancient times the
adoption of a rebus writing system
was a truly revolutionary development.
With the adoption of more complex rebuses,
the number of cuneiforms ranged from
about 1500 to about 600. The previously
complicated pictures became simpler.
More advanced forms of cuneiform
were found in relics north of Moor.
The most famous among them were
from the poor.