Passage A
The emergence of cuneiform in ancient Sumer has long been characterized as a triumph of administrative utility. In the late fourth millennium BCE, the bureaucratic machinery of the temple estates in Uruk grew so vast that human memory could no longer track the flow of barley, sheep, and labor. To prevent systemic collapse, state scribes codified symbolic marks onto clay tablets, creating a top-down instrument of state surplus control. In this centralized model, writing did not emerge from a desire to record speech or creative impulse, but as a rigid ledger system imposed by ruling elites to enforce compliance and collect taxation from a dependent agrarian populace.
Passage B
Rather than an administrative invention of the state, writing's origins lay in a decentralized network of prehistoric trade. For millennia preceding the Uruk period, Near Eastern merchants utilized clay tokens representing specific commodities to verify transactions. As trade expanded, merchants enclosed these tokens in clay envelopes (bullae), marking the exterior to indicate the contents. Eventually, the three-dimensional tokens were discarded, leaving only the two-dimensional marks on flat clay. Writing thus evolved organically from the bottom-up, as a horizontal system of trust and contract management between independent economic actors, which the state only later co-opted.
Based on the passages, which of the following statements best describes how the authors of Passage A and Passage B differ in their characterization of the role of state authority in the emergence of writing?
- APassage A describes writing as originating from a popular movement to democratize temple records, while Passage B describes it as an elite mechanism designed to exclude average merchants.
- Passage A characterizes writing as a top-down tool invented by ruling elites to administer state resources, while Passage B characterizes it as a horizontal system of commerce that developed prior to state involvement.Answer
- CPassage A asserts that state officials opposed the spread of writing due to administrative chaos, while Passage B asserts that merchants actively resisted state regulation of their clay tokens.
- DBoth passages argue that writing was a collaborative effort between temple scribes and independent traders to standardize commodity exchange throughout ancient Mesopotamia.