Japanese folding screen depicting a scene from the Tale of the Heike, seventeenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mary Griggs Burke Collection, gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015.
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The first written language, Sumerian cuneiform, is believed to date to around 3000 bc. Archaeologists have found evidence that astronomical texts were still being written in cuneiform in the first century of the Common Era; decadent varieties of the language survived to the time of Christ.
Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.
—Susan Sontag, 1973
