Cuneiform tablet relating to a bill for the sale of one sheep and one goat. Cuneiform, the first written language, was invented by the Sumerians who inhabited Mesopotamia (now south-eastern Iraq) from the 4th to the 3rd millennium BC. It was written on clay tablets with a reed stylus. The language died with the civilisation upon the rise of Babylonia in the late 3rd millennium BC, but the writing system was adopted by the Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians. This tablet is dated to between 2200 and 1900 BC.