Cuneiform survived three millennia partly because the people who could read it guarded their monopoly, and literacy for all was unthinkable.

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Our reading — they may agree, disagree or merely touch the same thing. Closest first: a shared subject counts for most, then how near the wording is.

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• Assyriology has a built-in assumption that the tablets we have are roughly all there ever was, and it is absurd. IFIrving Finkel12 Dec 2025similar wording

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