to imagine that writing was developed in response to the needs of the state institutions which engaged in more and more management over time, since it offered the possibility of recording more complex operations and of creating an archive. From this point of view, the pre-writing system which developed around 3400–3200 BC functioned as an aide-mémoire and was not capable of recording complete phrases because it only had symbols for real objects, especially goods and people, with a vast number of numerical signs for the multiple different metrological systems, and only a few actions (Englund calls this the stage of the 'numerical tablets' and of the 'numero-ideographic tablets'). The signs then began to take on a larger number of values, making it possible to record administrative operations more precisely (approximately 3200–2900 BC, Englund's Proto-Cuneiform phase). In this period or even later (at latest around 2800–2700 BC), another type of meaning was recorded by means of the rebus principle: an association of pictograms could indicate actions (for example head + water = drink), while homophony could be used to represent ideas ('arrow' and 'life' were pronounced the same way in Sumerian, so the sign for 'arrow' could be used to indicate 'life', which would otherwise be difficult to represent pictorially). Thus, some ideograms appeared. Following the same principle, phonetic signs were created (phonograms, one sign = one sound). For example, 'arrow' was pronounced as TI in Sumerian, so the sign for 'arrow' could be used to indicate the sound [ti]). At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, the fundamental principles of Mesopotamian writing—the association of logograms and phonograms—had been put in place. Writing was then able to record grammatical elements of the language and thus to record complete phrases, a possibility which was not properly exploited until some centuries later. A more recent theory, defended by Jean-Jacques Glassner, argues that from the beginning writing was more than just a managerial tool; it was also a method for recording concepts and language (i.e. Sumerian), because from its invention the signs did not only represent real objects (pictograms) but also ideas (ideograms), along with their associated sounds (phonograms). This theory presents writing as a radical conceptual change, resulting in a change in the way the world was perceived. From the beginning of writing, scribes wrote lexical lists on the edges of administrative documents. These were proper scholarly works, enabling them to explore