Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/56

 26 General History of Europe hundred years later. Here they were the predecessors of the Hebrews and were called Canaanites. Along the Mediterranean shores of north Syria some of these former desert wanderers the EARLY SUMERIAN CLAY TABLET WITH CUNEIFORM, OR WEDGE-FORM WRITING (TWENTY-EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.) This tablet was written toward the close of the early period of the city- kings, a generation before the accession of Sargon I (38). It contains business accounts. The scribe's writing-reed, or stylus, was usually square- tipped. He pressed a corner of this square tip into the soft clay for each line of the picture sign. Lines so produced tended to be broad at one end and pointed at the other; that is, wedge-shaped. Each picture sign thus became a group of wedges, as shown in the preceding illustration. When the clay dried it was hard enough to make the tablet a fairly permanent record. Such tablets were sometimes baked and thus became as hard as pottery. (By permission of Dr. Hussey) Pho3nicians took to the sea and became great traders (83). By 2000 B.C. all the settled communities had a civilization largely adopted from the cities of Babylonia and Egypt.