Tablet gallery: cuneiform tablets from the British Museum

Not surprisingly, cuneiform script took many forms, and was employed for many different purposes, over its 3000-year history. This gallery illustrates some of the rich variety of cuneiform tablets, grouped in roughly chronological order. They have been selected from the collections of the British Museum by Dr Jonathan Taylor of the British Museum's Department of the Middle East.

The British Museum's extensive collection of cuneiform tablets is housed in the museum's handsome Arched Room, built in the late 1830s for the British Library and now a major hub of Assyriological research. This engraving was made for a book called London Interiors, published in 1841. View large image on the British Museum's website.

From the fourth and third millennia BC

From the second millennium BC

From the first millennium BC

There are also photographs of nearly thirty 7th-century letters, divinatory queries, and astrological reports, in Assyrian and Babylonian script, in the Highlights section of the website.

 
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