Lena C. Van Bibber was born circa 1876 in Harford County, Md., and was the daughter of Judge George Van Bibber. She graduated from the State Teachers College at Towson in 1897, and then taught at Bel Air High School until 1915. In 1916, Van Bibber joined the faculty at the State Teachers College at Towson, where she taught history until her retirement in 1940. She earned a bachelor’s degree and diploma in Teaching of History from Columbia University, as well as a master’s degree from John Hopkins University. Van Bibber died in Maryland in 1962.

The cuneiform clay tablets in this collection were probably acquired by Lena C. Van Bibber from Edgar J. Banks sometime in 1939. Banks had been assigned to Baghdad, Iraq in 1898 as the American consul, and while there, he began excavations in ancient Adab, present-day Bismya, Iraq. He was an antiquities enthusiast and went on to purchase many clay tablets in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire, which later were distributed to various universities, museums, and libraries throughout the United States.

It is around 3100 BCE that clay tablets appear in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, with impressed or incised signs in a script know as cuneiform and distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks. The development of these tablets is attributed to the Sumerians, and represents the earliest evidence of a writing system. It is between the thirty-fourth century BCE and the first centuries of the Common Era that cuneiform was used to write texts in a variety of languages. These cuneiform signs are formed with horizontal, vertical, triangular, and oblique marks that are impressed into the mass of the moist clay of the tablet which can be of various sizes.

The invention of a writing system gave rise to a material culture associated with it, and thus the appearance of the clay tablet and the stylus. Most of the earliest texts are written on clay, and information recorded in these early clay tablets is mostly administrative in nature, including government receipts, contracts and trade transactions, but other types of texts include temple activities, stories, myths, medical and school texts, and personal letters. The stylus was the writing instrument used by the scribe to write on the clay tablets. It was a piece of reed with on end in cylindrical shape, and the other cut as a bevel.