Writing and Accounting in Early Mesopotamia

30/08/2021

The WritEMe project gladly announces that the Archaic Text Graphemics database is finally out. It is conceived as a tool for the study of the earliest cuneiform texts from the late 4th / beginning 3rd millennia BCE. https://mmaiocchi.github.io/WritEMe_Uruk_palaeography/

18/02/2021

I am really glad to announce that the WritEMe project will take part to the 67th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, the annual conference of the International Association for Assyriology (IAA). The event will be hosted by the University of Turin from July 12 to July 16, 2021. This year, the theme is “Eating and Drinking in the Ancient Near East”. Within this frame, the WritEMe presentation -- titled “Accounting for Alimentary Items in Third Millennium Southern Mesopotamia: Archives, Procedures, Terminology, Media” -- will focus on practical aspects in managing alimentary items, as emerging from a narrow selection of cuneiform sources from the late third millennium BCE southern Mesopotamia. . More info coming soon!

Dear colleagues, welcome to the website of the 67th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, the annual conference of the International Association for Assyriology (IAA), that will be hosted by the University of Turin from July 12 to July 16, 2021. The conference's main theme is "Eating and

08/02/2021

Welcome to the page of the "Writing and Accounting in Early Mesopotamia" project!

WritEMe is based at the "Centre national de la recherche scientifique" (CNRS), UMR 7041 / Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité / Histoire et Archéologie de l’Orient Cunéiforme (http://www.arscan.fr/haroc/HAROC), Nanterre, Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Mondes, France.

Here is a short project description:

The EU-funded WritEMe project aims to reassess how writing emerged, developed, and interplayed with accounting devices in the early urban cultures of the ancient Near East (4th - 2nd millennia BCE). Recent archaeological discoveries — accounting devices from Turkey and pigments on early cuneiform tablets from Iraq – prompt us to consider a diverse scenario, which is more complex than previously thought in terms of media, actors, and techniques for the transmission of knowledge. Challenging old evolutionary models, the project will focus on both philology of cuneiform sources and analysis of the art history record, informed by innovative digital humanities solutions for data mining of ancient sources. The evidence thus gathered will be framed in a broad interdisciplinary discourse on ancient history and cultural evolution.