ANSWERS: 1
  • Hard to say for sure, since, well, no one was writing about how writing developed until after writing had developed. Also, writing didn't develop overnight. There are plenty of examples of proto-writing for things like receipts or other short records. The oldest Sumerian tablets surviving into the modern period are the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was a Sumerian King who must have lived before the tablets were made. But 1. we cannot say that the Tablets were the first written copy of the story, 2. we cannot accurately date those tablet to a specific king's reign, and 3. we cannot say for sure that it's the oldest literary story. Likely, though, sometime vaguely around the time of Gilgamesh, proto-writing started to become actual writing.

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