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receipts were initially kept in the form of tokens within clay "envelopes"—hollow shells of clay, called bullae, with several tokens rattling around inside. Tokens of different shapes were used to represent standard amounts of grain, textiles, or individual cattle. When goods were presented at the temple, the corresponding tokens were placed in a clay envelope, and the tax collector and taxpayer would both impress the envelope's wet clay with their personal signature seals to signify that the envelope's contents accurately reflected the tax paid. The envelope was then stored in the temple archive.
    It soon became clear, however, that an easier way to achieve the same result was to use a tablet of wet clay, and to press the tokens into it to make different-shaped impressions signifying barley, cattle, and so on. The signature seals could then be applied to this tablet, which was baked in the sun to make the impressions permanent. Tokens were no longer needed; their impressions would do instead. Gradually, tokens were abandoned altogether in favor of pictograms scratched into the clay, derived from the shapes of the tokens or of the objects they represented. Some pictograms thus came to stand as direct representations of physical goods, while other combinations of indentations stood for abstract concepts such as numbers.
    The oldest written documents, dating from around 3400 BCE from the city of Uruk, are small, flat tablets of clay that fit comfortably into the palm of one hand. They are commonly divided into columns and then subdivided into rectangles by straight lines. Each compartment contains a group of symbols, some made by pressing tokens into the clay, and others scratched using a stylus. Although these symbols are read from left to right and top to bottom, in all other respects this early script is utterly unlike modern writing and can only be read by specialists. But look closely, and the pictogram for beer—a jar on its side, with diagonal linear markings inside it—is easy to spot. It appears in wage lists, in administrative documents, and in word lists written by scribes in training, which include dozens of brewing terms. Many tablets consist of lists of names, next to each of which is the indication "beer and bread for one day"—a standard wage issued by the temple.
    A modern analysis of Mesopotamian ration texts found that the standard issue of bread, beer, dates, and onions, sometimes supplemented with meat or fish and with additional vegetables such as chickpeas, lentils, turnips, and beans, provided a nutritious and balanced diet. Dates provided vitamin A, beer provided vitamin B, onions provided vitamin C, and the ration as a whole provided 3,500 to 4,000 calories, in line with modern recommendations for adult consumption. This suggests that state rations were not just occasional handouts, but were the primary source of food for many people.

    An early cuneiform tablet, dating from around 3200 BCE, recording the allocation of beer
    Having started out as a means of recording tax receipts and ration payments, writing soon evolved into a more flexible, expressive, and abstract medium. By around 3000 BCE some symbols had come to stand for particular sounds. At the same time, pictograms made up of deep, wedge-shaped impressions took over from those composed of shallow scratches. This made writing faster but reduced the pictographic quality of the symbols, so that writing began to look more abstract. The end result was the first general-purpose form of writing, based on wedge-shaped, or "cuneiform," indentations made in clay tablets using reeds. It is the ancestor of modern Western alphabets, which are descended from it via the Ugaritic and Phoenician alphabets devised during the second millennium BCE.
    Compared with early pictograms, the cuneiform symbol for beer is barely recognizable as a jar shape. But it can be seen, for example, on tablets that tell the story of Enki, the cunning and wily god of