Home › Timeline › Eras › The Enclosure at the Birth of Writing
18 entries, in the order they happened: 1 where the Bible speaks and 17 where the historical record answers.
About the dating here: c. 3500 to c. 1150 BC
Every entry in this era
- c. 3500–3100 BCUruk: the first city and the first writingUruk, the first city, is ruled by a priest-king, and its first writing is temple accounts.
- c. 3400 BCHieroglyphs: the god's wordsEgypt's first writing is called “the god's words.” The name is a claim made at the birth of script: this writing does not describe the god, it is the…
- c. 3000 BCPapyrus and the scrollPapyrus and the scroll come into use: the first portable medium, and portability is what every later release of the word runs on.
- c. 2400 BC (Enmetena)Lagash: amargi, the earliest recorded releasesEnmetena, ruler of the Sumerian city of Lagash about 2400 BC, recorded that he 'instituted a remission (ama-gi) of the obligations of Lagash'…
- c. 2334 BCSargon's empireSargon founds the first empire, in the same river valley where Genesis sets Babel: the same gathering, tried again after the scattering.
- c. 2285 BCEnheduanna, the first named authorEnheduanna is the first author known by name, and she held her post from the throne: the first byline in history was issued by a crown.
- c. 2100 BCThe Ziggurat of UrThe great ziggurat of Ur rises on the same plain where Genesis sets the tower of Babel. The tower shape recurs in the tower story's own landscape.
- c. 2050 BCAbram leaves UrTerah takes Abram, Sarai and Lot out of Ur of the Chaldees toward Canaan.
- c. 1900–1050 BCThe alphabetSemitic-speaking soldiers and miners in Egypt and Sinai, not temple scribes, cut the first alphabet, where a sign stands for a sound instead of a…
- c. 1792–1750 BCHammurabi's misharumHammurabi decrees a release: household debts cancelled, debt-slaves freed, at least three centuries before the Torah's version.
- c. 1754 BCHammurabi's CodeHammurabi's law stone shows a god handing the law to the king, who hands it to everyone else, with his own image carved at the top.
- Old Babylonian period — nine…Nine edicts in 116 yearsBabylonian kings issue nine such releases in 116 years, about one every thirteen years, but never on a schedule: always at the king's pleasure.
- c. 1646 BCThe Edict of AmmisaduqaKing Ammisaduqa's edict spells out its release in numbered clauses, exempts business capital, and outlaws the tricks lenders used to dodge it.
- c. 1208 BCIsrael named by PharaohThe Merneptah Stele: "Israel is laid waste; his seed is not." The first mention of Israel outside the Bible, already a people in Canaan.
- c. 1200 BCIron replaces bronzeIron begins to replace bronze in the same years the old kingdoms fall: the material of war changes with the collapse.
- c. 1200–1150 BCThe Late Bronze Age collapseWithin about fifty years every palace kingdom of the eastern Mediterranean falls, and Linear B, a script kept to count what the palace owned, is not…
- c. 1200 BCTroy VIIa burnsTroy burns in the same fifty-year collapse. The story that survived that fire is one of the few narratives set in the same window as the Bible's…
- c. 1200 BC, the eventsThe Iliad's godsIn the Iliad the gods take sides in a human war, deceive, trade favour for sacrifice and strike from behind, and no one in the poem finds it a…