The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish 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.Henry Field, "The Field Museum-Oxford University Expedition to Kish, Mesopotamia, 1923–1929", Anthropology Leaflet, no. 28, 1929.Langdon, Stephen, "Excavations at Kish: The Herbert Weld (for the University of Oxford) and Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago) Expedition to Mesopotamia. Vol. 1", P. Geuthner, 1924. It should not be confused with the Scheil dynastic tablet, which contains part of the Sumerian King List 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 (“MSVO 4, 74 Artifact Entry.” (2001) 2024. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). September 24, 2024. https://cdli.earth/P005476.).Hayes, John L., 1990 A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts, Undena Publications
See also History of writing Narmer Palette Warka Vase
References
Further reading A. C. Moorhouse, The Triumph of the Alphabet: A History of Writing