Cuneiform characters were complex and varied. Not long after pottery was invented, this elaborate primitive writing system emerged. Used as trade records pressed into small clay tablets with sharpened reed styluses or carved into stone, this pictographic script gradually became fixed and standardized in the thirty-first century BC, completing its simplification and abstraction during the Assyrian period (1000 BC). The script taught in Eridu today was its abstracted form, making it easier to write on clay tablets and wax tablets, as well as standardize and recognize.
As the emperor's nominal High Priest, Miller promulgated standardized cuneiform. This was his primary work now and would remain so in the future. In the name of the temple of the God of Wisdom and the emperor, this relatively advanced and convenient writing system was taught in the schools established by the emperor and accepted by the city's residents. Any Eridu citizen of school age could study there. For students aspiring to become scribes or pursue other professions, merely learning to write was far from enough. They had to learn not only how to sharpen reeds, pound clay, and make tablets, but also arithmetic.
As an ideographic script developed from trade records, cuneiform represented numbers in a way entirely different from the Arabic numeral system. Yet cuneiform's decimal and sexagesimal mathematical notation was excessively cumbersome, and it was incompatible with the binary devices brought by the emperor. Therefore, as High Priest, Miller also had to teach selected students the Arabic numeral system and higher mathematics. The knowledge the emperor permitted students to learn in this era was worth any price to anyone, including every merchant in Eridu. Without precise mathematics, merchants could not calculate profits or anticipated prices, and the temple could not levy taxes upon them.
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