how to make cuneiform tablets out of gingerbread heres how creditjessica kourkounis for the new york timesnov 14 2016if you spend your days amid ancient clay tablets with one of the earliest forms of written language the thought might occur to you wouldnt it be fun to bake your own tablets out of gingerbread for the office holiday partyit did to katy blanchard 38 who is in charge of the near eastern collections at the university of pennsylvania museum of archaeology and anthropology the museum has one of the worlds largest collections of cuneiform tablets from early mesopotamia many of them written by ancient scribes who used a reed stylus to etch pictograms into clayms blanchard whose passions are archaeology and baking used chopsticks a fish knife and a gingerbread recipe that came packaged with a coliseumshaped cookiecutter she once bought not only did her cuneiform cookies beguile her colleagues at the office party they also gained some measure of internet renown after a penn museum publicist posted an article about how she made them sample comment from the public mine will probably taste more like the dead sea scrollsfrom there cuneiform cookies started to become as the newspaper the forward put it a thing bloggers were enthralled including one who said she was taking a class in hittite and opted to practice on shortbread the writing took a surprisingly long time she observedthe archaeoculinary trend also exposed an odd subculture of people who are consumed with ancient languages like the guy who uses the twitter handle dumbcuneiform and runs a business that will translate your tweets and texts into cuneiform characters and etch them in a handheld tablet no you cannot make this stuff upimagecreditjessica kourkounis for the new york timesit really struck the world in just the right nerdy place said ms blanchard noting that a number of people including home schooling parents classroom teachers and scholars of ancient languages had taken the idea and run with itpeople have made some amazing tablets much more complete and creative than mine ms blanchard said some people made full sentences mine just say god build bird and suncuneiform which is pronounced cuneayuhform and means wedgeshaped writing was devised by the sumerians more than 5000 years ago and survived until about 79 or 80 ad it emerged at roughly the same time as early egyptian writing and served as the written form of ancient tongues like akkadian and sumerian which thrived in what is now southern iraq because cuneiform was written in clay rather than say on papyrus and important texts were baked for posterity a good amount of it survives todayschoolchildren who visit the penn museum get to try their hand the deepest part of every symbol is the upper left because thats where you start with your reed and then you just swirl it around ms blanchard saidancient schoolchildren did the same thing and some of their efforts are on view at the museum written on handheld practice tablets