Assyrian cuneiform
| Cuneiform |
|
|---|---|
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 /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 (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.
The original Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic alphabet and Old Persian cuneiform. Cuneiform writing was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BC). By the second century AD, the script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in the 19th century.
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