The Sumerians in Mesopotamia used cuneiform, one of the world’s earliest writing systems.
Cuneiform began in southern Mesopotamia during the late 4th millennium BCE, probably developing from accounting marks used to record goods, labor, and transactions. Writers pressed a cut reed stylus into damp clay, producing wedge-shaped impressions; the Latin word cuneiform means “wedge-shaped.”
The system was first used for Sumerian, but later cultures adapted it for languages such as Akkadian, Elamite, and Hittite. Over time, its signs could represent words, syllables, or grammatical information. Clay tablets preserved administrative records, royal inscriptions, legal texts, mathematical work, literature, and correspondence.
Cuneiform is not an alphabet: a sign could have several values depending on context and language. The Epic of Gilgamesh survives in cuneiform tablets, including versions from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Scholars deciphered the system during the 19th century using multilingual royal inscriptions and comparative analysis.