Scripto. The table, the list

Before the book, before the sentence, even before the word, there is the list. In this seventh episode of Scripto, Thierry Chancogne traces the very earliest forms of writing, from Mesopotamian clay tablets to children’s ABC books; the tabular form emerges as the foundational act of all recorded thought. Naming, classifying, ordering. To write is, first and foremost, to take inventory of the world.