In Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, numerous commercial elites are indeed established. With the ambition to showcase their wealth, merchants record on tablets the quantities exchanged and their "quality," meaning their nature: gold, silver, construction wood, and other rare, valuable materials and objects imported from abroad.
Without paper or papyrus, they turn to the most common medium: stone, on which they engrave cuneiform writing with a pointed reed. Logographic in nature, the writing begins with images, though they do not always directly represent the meaning. For instance, a sheep might be depicted as a cross surrounded by a circle.