Sumer · About 3400-1700 BC

Cuneiform: how writing began

The first writing was not a poem but a receipt. Students follow cuneiform from the accounts of Uruk to the Epic of Gilgamesh, press their own signs, and find out how scholars learned to read it again in the 1800s.

Teach it live New Open on the map
Length
45 minutes
Ages
11–14
On the map
3 steps, 3400 BC to 1800 BC
Live lesson
7 rounds, 3 on the map
Worksheet
Two A4 pages, with Classroom
You need
A projector; phones for live

Live lesson · new in Classroom

Teach it live. The class answers on their phones.

Put the board on the projector. Students join with a six-digit code, no account needed, and tap the map: where was the frontier, where did the grain come from. Their pins drop in together when you reveal, and the closest student takes the round.

€19 per month: every lesson live, every worksheet, cancel anytime. Rome at its height runs live for free.

A live lesson on the projector: the class's pins on the map around Alexandria, the closest students listed beside it A student's phone: the question and a map to tap
7 rounds
3 places to find on the map, quiz questions, a class vote and a one-line answer.
About 15 minutes
Run it as the map step, or to open the discussion. You move on with the space bar.
A report
Every answer, per student and per round, to read back or print after the lesson.
1

Introduction

5 min

Read aloud

The first writing was not a poem but a receipt. Students follow cuneiform from the accounts of Uruk to the Epic of Gilgamesh, press their own signs, and find out how scholars learned to read it again in the 1800s.

By the end of the lesson, students can

  • Explain why and where cuneiform writing began.
  • Describe how cuneiform was written and who learned it.
  • Explain how scholars deciphered cuneiform in the 1800s.
2

Explore the map

12 min

Project the map, or let students follow on their own devices. Each step opens the map at the right year and place.

a

3400 BC

Where writing was born

Open the map in 3400 BC and turn on Historical Events. Find the marker for the invention of cuneiform writing at Uruk and read how the first writing was made.

Open this view on the map
b

3000 BC

Clay from the river

Look at the land around the Euphrates near Uruk and Ur. Scribes wrote with a cut reed on wet clay. Why were clay and reeds the perfect materials in southern Mesopotamia?

Open this view on the map
c

1800 BC

The key on a cliff

Travel northeast into the Zagros Mountains to the cliff of Behistun. Much later, about 520 BC, a Persian king carved an inscription here in three languages. It helped scholars read cuneiform again. Why would three languages help?

Open this view on the map
3

Class discussion

14 min

Pick two or three. They run from what happened to why it mattered.

  1. The first writing was used to count grain and sheep. Why do you think accounting came before stories?
  2. Baked clay tablets survive fires that destroy paper. How has that shaped what we know about Mesopotamia?
  3. Becoming a scribe took years of school. Who do you think got that chance, and who did not?
  4. Cuneiform was used for about 3,000 years and for many languages. Why might a writing system last so long?
  5. How did writing change what a government could do?
4

Game round

9 min

Play one round of Rule History as Hatshepsut. Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs, not cuneiform, but her officials kept records just as Sumerian scribes did. Discuss: which of her decisions would have been impossible without writing?

Open Rule History
5

Worksheet

5 min

This worksheet comes with Classroom

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