Word.ws English Dictionary

clay tablet

clay tablet noun: a writing medium made of clay used in Mesopotamia and nearby regions.

clay tablet: a writing medium made of clay used in Mesopotamia and nearby regions
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

clay tablet (plural clay tablets)

  1. (historical) A writing medium made of clay used in Mesopotamia and nearby regions.
    • “He is the stench of a mongoose... a smitten man who makes himself important.” No, this isn’t clunky dialogue from a low-budget film. It’s one of the many pieces of correspondence archaeologists have discovered etched on clay tablets in Uruk, the chief city of Sumer, the earliest known civilization...2022 July 26, Patricia S. Daniels, “Age-old secrets revealed from the world’s first metropolises”, in nationalgeographic.com, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2025
    • In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire. Marked with the administrative details of government, the tablets have illuminated the complicated bureaucracy of an ancient Mesopotamian...2025 March 19, Sonja Anderson, “4,000-Year-Old Clay Tablets Show Ancient Sumerians’ Obsession With Government Bureaucracy”, in smithsonianmag.com, archived from the original on 20 Dec 2025

Examples of clay tablet in a sentence

  • In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire.2025 March 19, Sonja Anderson, “4,000-Year-Old Clay Tablets Show Ancient Sumerians’ Obsession With Government Bureaucracy”, in...
  • On one clay tablet, for example, he is shown wearing a horned crown, resembling, Rey adds, “a god-like figure.”2025 March 20, Hadani Ditmars, “Ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets discovered in Iraq reveal intricate details of how empire was governed”...

Forms of clay tablet

pluralclay tablets

Origin of clay tablet

From clay + tablet.

Questions about clay tablet

What does clay tablet mean?
Clay tablet means a writing medium made of clay used in Mesopotamia and nearby regions.
How do you use clay tablet in a sentence?
In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire.
What part of speech is clay tablet?
Clay tablet is a noun.
What is the plural of clay tablet?
The plural of clay tablet is clay tablets.

Words near clay tablet in the dictionary

  1. clay pit
  2. clay pits
  3. clay shale
  4. clay slate
  5. clay slates
  6. clay tablet
  7. clay tablets
  8. clay up
  9. clay-cold
  10. clay-colored thrush
  11. claybank

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clay tablet (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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