Cuneiform was the ancient Mesopotamian writing system made with wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets.
The name cuneiform comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning “wedge.” Scribes pressed the sharpened end of a reed stylus into wet clay, creating combinations of straight wedge impressions. The earliest known forms developed in southern Mesopotamia during the late fourth millennium BCE, probably for recording economic transactions.
Cuneiform was first used to write Sumerian and was later adapted for languages including Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, and Urartian. Its signs could represent words, syllables, or grammatical elements, so the system changed substantially across time and languages.
Clay tablets preserved records of trade, laws, literature, mathematics, astronomy, and government. The Epic of Gilgamesh survives in cuneiform manuscripts, and the Code of Hammurabi was also written in a cuneiform script. Cuneiform is not the same as Egyptian hieroglyphs, which used a different sign system and writing tradition.