Archaeologists unearth and decipher ancient tablet bearing a shopping list

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient tablet with an early form of writing that preserves a furniture shopping list from around 3,500 years ago.

The tablet was uncovered during excavations at the archaeological site of Alalakh in what is now the Hatay Province of Turkey, the country’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said in a statement.

This ancient city flourished in the 2nd millennium B.C. as an urban settlement of the Amorites—a Bronze Age people from the Levant, a region of the Eastern Mediterranean, who spoke a Semitic language. The remains of the city have formed a large mound that now covers an area of around 22 hectares (around 55 acres).

The clay tablet found at Alalakh is relatively small, measuring around 1.6 by 1.4 inches, with a thickness of 0.6 inches and a weight of roughly 1 ounce. Experts believe that it dates to around the 15th century B.C.

Intriguingly, the tablet contains text written in cuneiform, an ancient script generally considered to be the oldest known writing system.

Developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia (an ancient region centered on modern-day Iraq) more than 5,000 years ago, cuneiform is not a language in itself. Instead, it is a script that was used to write in several languages of the ancient Near East, primarily Sumerian and Akkadian. Created to write the Sumerian language, the script was later adapted for Akkadian and, subsequently, other tongues, such as Hittite.

The tablet found in the archaeological site of Alalakh is an example of Akkadian cuneiform. Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was widely spoken in the ancient Near East from the 3rd millennium B.C. until it began to be replaced by Aramaic from around the 8th century B.C. Akkadian is the earliest known Semitic language.

Experts examined the writing on the Alalakh tablet and found that it contains a record of a “large amount of furniture shopping,” Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, said in a post on X.

“We believe that this tablet…will provide a new perspective in terms of understanding the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” Ersoy said. “We work meticulously to carry the rich heritage of Anatolia to future generations.”

Linguists continue to study the cuneiform script on the tablet—the first lines of which record the purchase of large amounts of wooden tables, chairs and stools, as well as information about the buyers and sellers.

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