From Deirdre Linton
I suppose I ought not to be surprised any more that newspapers and magazines in general know so little about Ancient Iraq, but it still disappoints me when they – frequently – publish photographs of cuneiform tablets upside down (10 May, p 8).
There is a simple scientific method for recognising which is the top and which is the bottom of a tablet. Cuneiform signs are made up of lines and triangles. No apex of a triangle is ever at the top of a sign because to achieve that the poor scribe would have to hold his stylus upside down.
Wolverhampton, West Midlands, UK
