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The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Actual writing is first recorded in Uruk (modern Iraq), at the end of the 4th millennium BCE, and soon after in various parts of the Near East. [30] An ancient Sumerian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing:
The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
A writing material, also called a writing medium, is a surface that can be written on with suitable instruments, or used for symbolic or representational drawings. Building materials on which writings or drawings are produced are not included.
The earliest knowledge society has on the history of books actually predates what would conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of papyrus. The current format that we consider to be books, with separate sheets fastened together rather than a scroll, is called a codex.
Paper is a thin nonwoven material traditionally made from a combination of milled plant and textile fibres. The first paper-like plant-based writing sheet was papyrus in Egypt, but the first true papermaking process was documented in China during the Eastern Han period (25–220 AD), traditionally attributed to the court official Cai Lun.
Papyrus (P. BM EA 10591 recto column IX, beginning of lines 13–17) Papyrus (/ p ə ˈ p aɪ r ə s / pə-PY-rəs) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface.
The oldest known scroll is the Diary of Merer, which can be dated to c. 2568 BCE in the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu or Cheops due to its contents.Scrolls were used by many early civilizations before the codex, or bound book with pages, was invented by the Romans [3] and popularized by Christianity. [4]
Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form their signs. Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system [6] [7] and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).