History Lesson: The First Writing

Look – we’re carving our names in clay for all eternity! 

Okay, not exactly clay, because apparently, since last week, Dollarama stopped carrying actual goopy gray clay from the ground and switched to a weird, lightweight, smelly plastic-based clay.  I chose white, because it seemed more authentically historic than fluorescent green or pink.

Here, Gavriel Zev is actually cutting his clay into a bazillion pieces and stretching it out like chewing gum.

The SOTW Activity Book comes with its own guide to Hieroglyphics and Cuneiform, but I found this website that converts whatever you type to full-colour hieroglyphs, so I printed out our names, and copied them onto a “scroll.” (ie dollarama newsprint)

 

Naomi’s scroll did not go very well.  You really need a VERY stiff brush, and our cheap ones kept going floppy – you can see the rapid deterioration in my hieroglyphs from the first line to the last.  She was in tears and gave up very quickly.  So instead, I had her choose wooden sticks from outside and we glued them to the edges of mine to make it an official scroll.

When the clay is dry and hard, we will put them both outside as an experiment in which lasts longer in the harsh elements, “papyrus” or “clay.”