Cuneiform was the Mesopotamian writing system whose marks resemble wedges. Scribes pressed the cut end of a reed stylus into damp clay, producing combinations of straight wedge-shaped strokes.
The system developed in southern Mesopotamia during the late fourth millennium BCE, first for administrative records such as quantities of goods, labor, and livestock. Over time, cuneiform became capable of recording literature, royal inscriptions, legal texts, mathematics, medicine, and religious rituals.
Cuneiform was not one language. It was a writing system used for Sumerian, Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, and other languages. Its signs could represent words, syllables, or grammatical elements, which made reading context-dependent. Scholars deciphered it during the nineteenth century using multilingual royal inscriptions, especially those connected with the Achaemenid Persian king Xerxes.