In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets (Akkadian ṭuppu(m) 𒁾) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.

Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were grilled in a kennal or fired in kilns (or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East.

In the Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations, writing has not been observed for any use other than accounting. Tablets serving as labels, with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest a sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region the tablets were never fired deliberately, as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest are still tablets of unfired clay, and extremely fragile; some modern scholars are investigating the possibility of firing them now, as an aid to preservation.

Kelly Helene Clay (born April 18, 1985) is an American blogger and social media strategist. She is best known for her contributions to Lockergnome.com as a social media analyst.

Clay was born in Oak Harbor, Washington. She graduated with a degree in Law, Societies and Justice from the University of Washington in 2006. Kelly currently lives in Kingston, WA.

Kelly Clay is a featured contributed for LockerGnome.com, which is a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities owned by Chris Pirillo. Since 2010 Clay has contributed over 900 blog posts. Kelly also assisted with coordinating the 2011 series of Gnomedex events in the Seattle area. She appears regularly on the LockerGnome YouTube channel.

In 2011, Kelly Clay was selected to attend CES as a member of the Sears Blue Blogging Crew. Clay has also been named a Woman of Google+ and a "Passionista" as part of the Huffington Post's TwitterPowerhouses series.

Kelly Clay has also contributed to other social media outlets including SocialMedia.org's BlogWell