Archaeologists unearth a 3,500-year-old shopping list

Shopping lists are essential for making sure nothing is missed out during a shopping trip so people don’t end up getting in the front door and annoyingly realising they’ve forgotten something.

And it seems they have been around for thousands and thousands of years as a group of archaeologists excavating the Accana Mound, also known as Eski Alalah, in Turkey have discovered a cuneiform tablet detailing a shopping list of purchases from almost 3,500-years-ago, reports Heritage Daily.

Cuneiform is one of the oldest forms of writing; it means ‘wedge-shaped’ and is a logo-syllabic writing system.

Mehmet Ersoy, the Minister of Culture and Tourism in Turkey, said in a press statement archaeologists have unearthed a cuneiform tablet during restoration works in the old city of Alalah following an earthquake.

It was written in Akkadian, an extinct East Semitic language, and the tablet itself dates from the 15th century BC.

Although modern day shopping lists are most commonly used around supermarkets, these of course didn’t exist almost 3,500-years-ago, and intriguingly the list discovered in Turkey was for furniture.

It is an administrative record of a very large number of furniture purchases.

Linguists are continuing to study what exactly the shopping list says but have so far uncovered purchase details of a number of wooden tables, chairs and stools as well as further details about who purchased them and where they were bought from.

Minister Mehmet Ersoy, said: “We believe that this tablet, weighing 28 grams, will provide a new perspective in our understanding of the rich heritage of Anatolia for future generations.”

As well as being quite weighty, the tablet measures 42mm x 35mm and has a thickness of 16mm.

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