The first written items were clay tablets that basically were used to keep track of shipments, inventories, possessions, etc. They have been found in what is called the Fertile Crescent.
The earliest deciphered writing reads “Mountain of light” and is found on a postage-stamp-sized clay tablet from the “King Scorpion” tomb in Abydos, Egypt. It’s from sometime before 3000 BC. You can see a picture of it here:
Thanks aegypt, this is exactly what I was looking for. I thought it might have either been Sumerian or Egyptian.
What are you talking about? It’s obvious this thing reads:
“MY LOOV”
This is a very old graffito, and English not being the native language of the Indus people (you can tell by the crude handwritting), it’s not hard to see they simply misspelled “MY LOVE”.
[sub]Mountain of light, my love, gee were these people writting cheesy songs…[sub]
“Hello. You’ve reached Antedilluvian Mutual. Everyone is out of the office right now, but if you’d leave a message, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”
I own a Sumerian cuneiform document from around 3,000 BC. It’s surprisingly not that rare; you can pick up similar items on ebay occasionally for under $1,000.
Mine is believed to be a property deed. It’s about 1 1/2 inches square and 3/8 inch wide and written on both sides in cuneiform. It was probably used similarly to a card in a card index, i.e. stacked with many others in a long thin box. It has writing along one of the edges, presumably some index information, like the property holders name or the location of the property.
One of the neat things about the one I have is that it has a small seal on it. People had a small spool with pictures engraved on it that they would roll in clay to sign their name.