Inkpotamus

An ancient Stone Age taxman,
Used tally-sticks for counting,
Each farmer’s tax in wheat and sheep,
And recording the amount in.

“The problem is my tally-sticks,
They all look just the same,
The notches counting sheep appear,
Just like those counting grain.”

Necessity, it’s often said,
Is the mother of invention,
And through applied technology,
You achieve a new intention.

The taxman used a ball of clay,
To represent a sheep,
Then he used another shape,
For a certain weight of wheat.

“Let’s store these tokens in a pot,
In an envelope of clay,
Then accounts of farmers’ taxes,
Won’t get lost along the way.”

“And on the outside of the pot,
Draw a picture of each token,
That way we’ll easily count ‘em up,
They’ll not get touched or broken.”

Later on, another chap,
Who really was quite clever,
Realised you didn’t need,
To use those tokens ever.

“I don’t really need to count,
The tokens that I’ve got,
If I can count the pictures,
On the outside of the pot!”

Now tracking tax came easily,
Through scratching signs in clay,
And rulers in those ancient lands,
Made farmers pay and pay.

One day a scribe lamented,
“These scratches made in clay,
Are just recording endless lists,
But never words we say.”

You could use the sign for one thing,
To mean another word,
If the names you have for both things,
have the same sound that you heard.

He thus created writing,
For expressing thoughts we get,
And the first thing that he wrote was:
“You ain’t read nothing yet!”