Endnote 9 – The Question of Israelite Literacy

The situation was, of course, different in Mesopotamia and wherever cuneiform writing was inscribed on clay tablets that formed archives. But even in Assyria, papyrus was certainly used in the seventh century B.C. in conjunction with clay tablets. There is pictorial evidence in the painting and reliefs of two scribes, one holding a clay tablet or hinged writing-board, the other a curling scroll, and there is written evidence in the reports of quesnons put to the god Shamash about “the man whose name is written on this piece of papyrus.”