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How were Hittite clay tablets sometimes recycled after they were no longer needed?
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cuneiform
An account of barley distribution, probably from Uruk, Mesopotamia, c. 3100ā2900 bce; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
In the Hittite civilization, documents of an ephemeral natureāsuch as letters, administrative texts, and oracle recordingsāwere typically preserved for only a generation or two. Once these documents had served their purpose, they were often recycled: the clay was ground up, moistened, and reconstituted into new tablets for future use.1