Cuneiform

Cuneiform
Trilingual cuneiform inscription of Xerxes at Van Fortress in Turkey, written in Old Persian, Akkadian, and Elamite
Type	Logographic and syllabic
Languages	Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hattic, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, Sumerian, Urartian, Old Persian
Time period	c. 31st century BC to 1st century AD
Parent systems	(Proto-writing) Cuneiform
Child systems	none; influenced shape of Ugaritic; apparently inspired Old Persian
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Xsux, 020
Unicode alias	Cuneiform
Unicode range	U+12000 to U+123FF Cuneiform U+12400 to U+1247F Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation

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.