The early development of writing in Mesopotamia (Chapter 3.7) carries with it an early although limited literacy contemporary with several millennia of prehistory in other parts of the world. A fully developed writing system was in use in Mesopotamia by the middle of the 4th millennium bce, although its use was restricted to a limited, especially educated group. There is even a slightly later group of texts, obviously written for scribal amusement, that make fun of the poor scholar with his “apple for a teacher” (Postgate 1992: ch. 3; Oates 1986: 163–6).

Many government officials, even kings, could neither read nor write: an early 2nd-millennium letter concludes “Read this tablet and – if it is appropriate – read it to the king”, while as late as the 7th century, an Assyrian king boasted of his ability to read and write, implying that this was unusual. The records of Mesopotamian scribes were meticulous, especially in matters economic. Even the smallest payments and receipts were carefully noted, and items “in” and “out”, however unimportant, are carefully registered. By far the largest number of surviving cuneiform texts are of these economic types.

The earliest texts are written in Sumerian but by the 3rd millennium there is substantial evidence of Semitic populations throughout northern Mesopotamia (Assyria). By early in the 3rd millennium, Semitic-speaking peoples had also become the dominant population in Akkad, that is, the northern part of southern Mesopotamia where the city of Kish, just south of modern Baghdad, had clearly developed into a powerful Semitic city. Indeed, the title “King of Kish” came to signify dominion over the whole of the country. Even the so-called Sumerian King List attributed the earliest “kingship” to Kish despite its Semitic nature, although there is some evidence for an earlier tradition associating “kingship” with Sumerian Uruk (Foster & Foster 2009: 39).