This is the oldest artifact in the Toronto Public Library’s research collection
You can see it up close at the library’s new handwriting exhibition
The Toronto Public Library’s Reddit account has given us a glimpse of the riveting historical treasures we can expect to see in its new Loops, Swoops & Curlicues: A Legacy of Handwritten History exhibition, which opened a few days ago.
Related: The Toronto Public Library’s most-borrowed books list has arrived
“We’ve got the receipts when it comes to preserving old items… literally,” said the library’s absolute banger of a post. “This clay tablet is a textiles receipt dating back to the Ur III Period, around 2112–2004 BCE.”
Various images of the tablet, preserved in the TPL’s research collection, are shown, and the library explains its significance. “You’ll notice cuneiform markings, an ancient writing system made by impressing wedge shapes into clay. We don’t know the item’s place of origin, but cuneiform was used mostly in Mesopotamia dating back to ~4000 BCE,” said the post.
Sometimes the internet is a horrid and negative place. And sometimes the Toronto Public Library logs on to blow our minds.
The exhibition, on at the Reference Library until May 10, also features the petition for the first public libraries in Toronto and an illuminated manuscript from the 1400s.
Related: Just when Jays’ fans thought the Addison Barger pull-out couch had been forgotten...
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
