Writing system
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.
Spurlock Museum
This collection of approximately 1750 inscribed tablets from ancient sites of Umman and Drehem in Mesopotamia dates from the Third Dynasty of Ur in the 21st and 20th centuries BCE to the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods(ca. 625-520 BCE). This collection includes texts written in both the Sumerian and the Akkadian languages. The script called cuneiform, is the earliest writing system in the world.