powerful case for linking state administration and writing is that it seems to have been used in Mesopotamia essentially for bookkeeping purposes for more than half a millennium before it even began to reflect the civilizational glories we associate with writing: literature, mythology, praise hymns, kings lists and genealogies, chronicles, and religious texts.33 The magnificent Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, dates from Ur’s Third Dynasty (circa 2,100 BCE), a full millennium after cuneiform had been first used for state and commercial purposes.
