made it clear that in Mesopotamian (Babylonian and Assyrian) civilization, clay was the basic material used for writing purposes, the equivalent of modern paper. While the clay was soft, wedge-shaped marks were imprinted with a stylus; this is the meaning of cuneiform writing. Then the soft marked clay was baked hard so that the writing was permanently imprinted on its surface. FIGURE 3: The reverse of a clay tablet discovered at Ras Shamra, 1929, listing names of persons Thus the discovery of