An ancient Mesopotamian writing system, adapted within several language families, originating as pictograms in Sumer around the 30th century BC, evolving into more abstract and characteristic wedge shapes formed by a blunt reed stylus on clay tablets
The earliest writing system (used, for example, in ancient Mesopotamia) A form of writing on wet clay tablets using a wedge-like writing tool called a stylus
One of the carpal bones usually articulating with the ulna; called also pyramidal and ulnare
Early Mesopotamian writing that used a stylus (writing implement) to write wedge-shaped impressions on raw clay; from the Latin word for wedge
The oldest form of writing, invented by the ancient Sumerians around 3,000 BC The word "cuneiform" means "wedge-shaped" and refers to the peculiar shapes of the marks made by sharpened reeds on clay tablets
Body of laws revealed by documents written in cuneiform script (see cuneiform writing). It includes the laws of the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Hurrians, Kassites, and Hittites. Unlike modern legal codes, these ancient codes do not systematically treat all the rules applicable to a given area of law; rather, they treat a variety of matters but often ignore many highly important rules simply because such rules were so grounded in custom that they went unquestioned. The most important of the ancient codes is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi
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 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 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