What is the name given to the ancient Sumerian form of writing?

The ancient Sumerian form of writing is called cuneiform. It developed in southern Mesopotamia, especially around the city of Uruk, and is recognized by the wedge-shaped impressions made in clay.

The earliest known proto-cuneiform records date to approximately 3300 BCE. Many of the first tablets were administrative documents recording goods, livestock, labor, and trade. Scribes pressed a sharpened reed stylus into wet clay, gradually transforming early pictorial signs into a complex system combining word signs and syllabic signs.

Although cuneiform was created for Sumerian, it was later adapted to write languages including Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Hurrian, and Urartian. It therefore refers to a writing system rather than a single language. The script remained in use for more than three millennia, with the latest known tablets dating to the first centuries CE.

People sometimes confuse cuneiform with hieroglyphics. Egyptian hieroglyphs belong to a different writing tradition; cuneiform's distinctive feature is the wedge-shaped mark pressed or incised into clay.