Uruk and the invention of writing

Uruk grew into perhaps the world's first true city, with tens of thousands of people by around 3100 BC. Temple administrators there developed the earliest known writing, pressing signs into clay tablets to record goods and labour; it developed into cuneiform. Gilgamesh, hero of the first great epic, was remembered as Uruk's king. Its eroded ruins rise from the desert near the Euphrates.