Ancient Egypt and Sumer (contemporaries of Egypt. Also the inventors of writing as noted in my previous article in the Manhasset Times) also invented a method of guaranteeing the contents of a delivery.
It is to be remembered that in those days the ability to read and write was limited to a very few highly trained scribes so the writing option did not exist for the average man.
Here is an example of how the Sumerians guaranteed a delivery.
Suppose someone wanted to send 10 sheep ands three bushels of wheat to a friend who lived far away. He would hire a man to deliver it.
But how is the recipient or sender to know whether the delivery man was honest. How would anyone know that something was missing?
First the government made and stocked standardized little round balls of clay and impressed a symbol each one. Then baked them.
There were symbols for many items, including for this example, sheep and a bushel of wheat.
So the shipper would, in this case, obtain 10 sheep tokens and three wheat tokens. These would be placed inside a clay sphere and baked hard.
When the delivery man delivered the items the recipient would then break open the sphere and match the tokens to the actual items.
For security one more step is necessary in the preparation of the envelope. Where we use our signature for identification the Sumerians would impress their personal seal on the sphere. This before it was baked. So now the recipient knew from whom the letter originated.
The Sumerian system was, in many ways, even more secure than our letter (or even registered letter) system.Today a competent crook can among other devious tricks, steam open a letter!
However for the Sumerian crook duplicating the impressed seal would be as difficult as trying to duplicate a signature.
Theodore Theodorsen
Manhasset
