Akkadian cuneiform
| Cuneiform |
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|---|---|
Trilingual cuneiform inscription of Xerxes at Van Fortress in Turkey, written in Old Persian, Akkadian, and Elamite
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| Type |
Logographic and syllabic
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| Languages | Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hattic, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, Sumerian, Urartian, Old Persian |
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Time period
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c. 31st century BC to 1st century AD |
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Parent systems
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(Proto-writing)
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Child systems
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none; influenced shape of Ugaritic; apparently inspired Old Persian |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Xsux, 020 |
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Unicode alias
|
Cuneiform |
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Cuneiform script (/kjuːˈniːᵻfɔːrm/ kew-NEE-i-form or /kjuːˈneɪᵻfɔːrm/kew-NAY-i-form or /ˈkjuːnᵻfɔːrm/KEW-ni-form), one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped".
Emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC to convey the Sumerian language which was a language isolate (the Uruk IV period), cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller (Hittite cuneiform). The system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs.
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