Actually these aren't as rare as you might think. I've seen them offered for sale on a number of occasions, sometimes with translations. As I understand it, ancient bureaucrats kept thousands of records on clay tablets stacked up in wooden warehouses. Eventually the warehouses would burn down, either by accident or torched by some enemy invader. The clay tablets would be burned into rock and preserved like fired pottery. Jim A
Add: I did a Google search for
cuneiform tablets sale and found several for sale, along with an article on how to tell genuine
cuneiform tablets from fakes, with good pictures of real tablets and a "really horrible fake" being offered for sale on eBay by a "well known seller of fakes." Sounds familiar! Collecting these might make a nice hobby for someone who could afford it (not me). The better ones were in the 900 dollar range.
