Cuneiform is the ancient Mesopotamian writing system that used wedge-shaped marks.
The name comes from the Latin word cuneus, meaning “wedge,” referring to the impressions made by pressing a cut reed stylus into wet clay. The earliest known cuneiform emerged in southern Mesopotamia during the late fourth millennium BCE, initially for administrative record-keeping.
It began as a system associated with accounting and gradually developed into a flexible script for languages including Sumerian and Akkadian. Scribes used it for royal inscriptions, legal texts, literary works, scientific observations, and correspondence.
Cuneiform was not a single language or alphabet. Its signs could represent words, syllables, or grammatical information depending on context. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Code of Hammurabi survive in cuneiform traditions, although versions of these works span different periods and languages.