The Kish tablet is a

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

tablet found at the site of the ancient

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

ian city of

Kish Kish may refer to: Businesses and organisations * KISH, a radio station in Guam * Kish Air, an Iranian airline * Korean International School in Hanoi, Vietnam People * Kish (surname), including a list of people with the name * Kish, a former ...

in modern Tell al-Uhaymir, Babylon Governorate, Iraq. A plaster cast of the tablet is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, while the original is housed at the Iraq Museum in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

. It should not be confused with the Scheil dynastic tablet, which contains part of the ''

Sumerian King List The ''Sumerian King List'' (abbreviated ''SKL'') or ''Chronicle of the One Monarchy'' is an ancient Composition (language), literary composition written in Sumerian language, Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims ...

'' and is also sometimes called the Kish tablet. The signs on the Kish tablet, possibly related to proto-cuneiform, are purely pictographic, and have not been deciphered or demonstrated to correspond to any currently known human language. It has been dated to the Late Uruk period ().Hayes, John L., 1990 ''A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts'', Undena Publications

See also

References

Further reading