Scripts
Cuneiform
kyoo-NEE-uh-form
Also Known As Wedge-Shaped Writing
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Origin from 3500 BCE
Cuneiform is the wedge-shaped writing system the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia developed from pictographic accounting marks, beginning around 3500 to 3200 BCE. Early cuneiform was mostly logographic, with each sign standing for a whole word, and later developed a large syllabic sign inventory alongside its logograms. Scribes pressed the wedge shapes into soft clay with a cut reed stylus, and the script was adapted far beyond its Sumerian origin to write Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite and several other unrelated languages of the ancient Near East. It remained in active use for roughly three thousand years before alphabetic scripts, chiefly Aramaic, displaced it by around the turn of the era.
Facts
Script TypeReclassified under TaxonomyDecision 18: cuneiform mixes logograms with syllabic signs (Gelb's classic classification; Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996), distinct from a purely logographic system. DirectionalityLeft to right in horizontal rows; originally written top to bottom in vertical columns before shifting, with signs rotated 90 degrees, around the mid-third millennium BCE, a shift whose exact date is itself debated among specialists. 1 In Use Since (Year)Earliest proto-cuneiform pictographic tablets from Uruk; the standardized wedge script emerged by about 3200 BCE, and scholars debate exactly when proto-writing became true writing, with framings ranging from 3400 to 3200 BCE. Learn More
How Cuneiform Was Written and Read
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A scribe worked cuneiform into a wet clay tablet with a cut reed stylus, pressing rather than drawing, which is why every stroke ends in the same wedge shape the script is named for. The earliest tablets from Uruk, around 3200 BCE, were pictographic accounts of grain and livestock, read from the top down in vertical columns. Sometime in the mid third millennium BCE the convention changed: scribes began writing in horizontal rows, left to right, and every sign was rotated ninety degrees from its original orientation. Exactly when and why that rotation happened is still argued over. F. Delitzsch proposed that cursive horizontal writing on clay came first and vertical writing simply persisted longer on stone monuments and statues, a view A. Deimel and A. Falkenstein supported. S.A. Picchioni pushed back, showing that inscribed objects whose orientation can still be checked mostly kept the old vertical arrangement until much later than the rotation theory assumed, well into the Kassite period. Neither side has settled the question. What is certain is that once cuneiform had a syllabic sign inventory alongside its older logograms, it could be picked up by scribes who spoke nothing like Sumerian at all, which is exactly what happened next.
Cuneiform's Long Afterlife: One Script, Many Languages
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
No other writing system in history was borrowed by as many unrelated languages as cuneiform. Sumerian scribes built it; Akkadian scribes, speaking a Semitic language with almost nothing in common with Sumerian, adapted it within a few centuries, keeping many Sumerian logograms as learned shorthand while leaning on its syllabic signs for their own grammar. From Akkadian the script spread further still, into Babylonian and Assyrian, into Hittite and Hurrian and Urartian in Anatolia, into Elamite in southwestern Iran, and eventually into Old Persian, whose scribes stripped the system down to a much smaller, more alphabet-like set of signs. Each adaptation meant relearning which sounds and words the inherited signs should stand for, a genuinely awkward fit for languages cuneiform was never designed around. The wedge script's dominance did not last. Alphabetic writing, especially Aramaic, offered something cuneiform never could: a small, learnable sign inventory that did not require years of scribal training. By around the turn of the era, roughly three thousand years after the first proto-cuneiform accounting marks, the last cuneiform tablets, largely astronomical records, had been written. The script's final readers were rediscovered only in the nineteenth century.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Held Differently
Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Scripts Why this is disputed. Linguist Geoffrey Sampson has argued Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared shortly after cuneiform and were probably invented under its influence. Most specialists instead hold Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing arose independently, pointing to hieroglyphs' strong phonetic component from the start as evidence against a common source; the question is unresolved.
Script Of
Cuneiform, invented for Sumerian, was adapted to write Akkadian by the mid third millennium BCE and became its principal script for the rest of its written history.
Cuneiform was invented to write Sumerian before being adapted to Akkadian and other languages.
Sources
Dissenting Readings (2 dissenting readings)
Directionality
Picchioni argued against an early shift to horizontal writing, noting that until the Kassite period most inscribed objects whose orientation can be checked, vases, stelae and statues, still show the older vertical, top to bottom column arrangement, against Delitzsch, Deimel and Falkenstein, who held that horizontal cursive use on clay came earlier while vertical use persisted only on hard monumental materials.
A dissenting reading, from S.A. PicchioniCuneiform Digital Library Initiative, Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Influenced: Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Sampson has argued Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared shortly after Sumerian cuneiform and were probably invented under its influence. Most Egyptologists instead hold that Egyptian and Mesopotamian writing arose independently, pointing to hieroglyphs' strong phonetic component from the start as evidence against a shared source; the question remains unresolved.
A dissenting reading, from Geoffrey SampsonWorld History Encyclopedia, World History Encyclopedia (formerly Ancient History Encyclopedia)
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