I hope this gives u more information about cuneiform
Cuneiform is an ancient writing system that was first used in around 3400 BC. Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics. Here are six facts about the script that originated in ancient Mesopotamia…
The cuneiform writing system is also not an alphabet, and it doesn’t have letters. Instead it used between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words (or parts of them) or syllables (or parts of them).
The two main languages written in Cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian (from ancient Iraq), although more than a dozen others are recorded. This means we could use it equally well today to spell Chinese, Hungarian or English.
The first stage used elementary pictures that were soon also used to record sounds. Cuneiform probably preceded Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, because we know of early Mesopotamian experiments and ‘dead-ends’ as the established script developed – including the beginning of signs and numbers – whereas the hieroglyphic system seems to have been born more or less perfectly formed and ready to go. Almost certainly Egyptian writing evolved from cuneiform – it can’t have been an on-the-spot invention.
Amazingly, cuneiform continued to be used until the first century AD, meaning that the distance in time that separates us from the latest surviving cuneiform tablet is only just over half of that which separates that tablet from the first cuneiform.
Ancient Egypt
Cuneiform: 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the world’s oldest writing system
Cuneiform is an ancient writing system that was first used in around 3400 BC. Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics. Here are six facts about the script that originated in ancient Mesopotamia…
A counting of goats and rams in cuneiform script, ancient Ngirsu, Iraq, 2360 BC.
Curators of the world’s largest collection of cuneiform tablets – housed at the British Museum – revealed in a 2015 book why the writing system is as relevant today as ever. Here, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor share six lesser-known facts about the history of the ancient script…
1
Cuneiform is not a language
The cuneiform writing system is also not an alphabet, and it doesn’t have letters. Instead it used between 600 and 1,000 characters to write words (or parts of them) or syllables (or parts of them).
The two main languages written in Cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian (from ancient Iraq), although more than a dozen others are recorded. This means we could use it equally well today to spell Chinese, Hungarian
Cuneiform was first used in around 3400 BC
The first stage used elementary pictures that were soon also used to record sounds. Cuneiform probably preceded Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, because we know of early Mesopotamian experiments and ‘dead-ends’ as the established script developed – including the beginning of signs and numbers – whereas the hieroglyphic system seems to have been born more or less perfectly formed and ready to go. Almost certainly Egyptian writing evolved from cuneiform – it can’t have been an on-the-spot invention.
Amazingly, cuneiform continued to be used until the first century AD, meaning that the distance in time that separates us from the latest surviving cuneiform tablet is only just over half of that which separates that tablet from the first cuneiform.
c2044 BC, Sumeria, Ancient Iraq: Ur III clay administrative tablet, impressed with the scribes seal, which depicts a goddess leading a worshipper and the text Ur Gigir, scribe, son of Barran. The main text on the reverse (pictured) lists ploughmen employed by the state with the quantities of land assigned to them as wages. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
c2044 BC, Sumeria, Ancient Iraq: Ur III clay administrative tablet, impressed with the scribes seal, which depicts a goddess leading a worshipper and the text Ur Gigir, scribe, son of Barran. The main text on the reverse (pictured) lists ploughmen employed by the state with the quantities of land assigned to them as wages.
All you needed to write cuneiform was a reed and some clay
Both of which were freely available in the rivers alongside the Mesopotamian cities where cuneiform was used (now Iraq and eastern Syria). The word cuneiform comes from Latin ‘cuneus’, meaning ‘wedge’, and simply means ‘wedge shaped’. It refers to the shape made each time a scribe pressed his stylus (made from a specially cut reed) into the clay.
