historians continue to be deluged by new information almost on a daily basis as the ruins of the Near East—and the storerooms of modern museums—reveal more and more of these remnants of ancient cultures. The earliest known texts are administrative documents; mixed with them almost from the beginning are lists of words that were used to teach the skill to the next generation of bureaucrats. The earliest tablets are conventionally dated to approximately 3100 BCE. Literary texts are not found until