system of writing used in the ancient Middle East. The name, a coinage from Latin and Middle French roots meaning “wedge-shaped”, has been the modern designation from the early 18th century onward. Cuneiform was the most widespread and...

This Sumerian clay tablet from ancient southern Mesopotamia shows a tally of sheep and goats using incised cuneiform characters. Denise Schmandt-Besserat made...

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...

Writing system of the Sumerians and Baby-lonians (dating back to about 2900 BC). Its name is derived from the wedge-shaped impressions scratched into clay tablets with styluses. Edzard, D.O. 1976–80. Keilschrift. In D.O.Edzard et al. (eds),...

The cuneiform (kjuËniËÉfÉ"Ëm) script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Created by the Sumerians from ca. 3000 BC (with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium Uruk IV period[1]), cuneiform writing began as a system...