Cuneiform Writing

System of writing employed in ancient times to write a number of languages of the Middle East. The original and primary writing material for cuneiform texts was a damp clay tablet, into which the scribe would press a wedge-shaped stroke with a reed stylus. A configuration of such impressions constituted a character, or sign.

Proto-cuneiform signs dating from &circa; 3200–3000 &BC; were drawn rather than impressed and were largely pictographic (&see; pictography), though these features were lost as the script evolved. A single cuneiform sign could be a logogram (an arbitrary representation of a word) or a syllabogram (a representation of the sound of a syllable). The first language to be written in cuneiform was Sumerian (&see; Sumer). Akkadian began to be written in cuneiform &circa; 2350 &BC;. Later the script was adapted to other South Asian languages. Cuneiform was slowly displaced in the first millennium &BC; by the rise of Aramaic, written in an alphabet script of Phoenician origin. Knowledge of the value of cuneiform signs was lost until the mid-19th century, when European scholars deciphered the script.

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