Which civilization created the writing system known as cuneiform?

The Sumerians created the writing system known as cuneiform.

Cuneiform emerged in southern Mesopotamia, particularly in the Sumerian city of Uruk, during the late fourth millennium BCE. Early signs were impressed into wet clay with a reed stylus and recorded quantities of goods, workers, and administrative transactions.

The name cuneiform comes from the Latin word for “wedge-shaped,” describing the marks made by the stylus. Over time, the system developed from pictorial signs into a complex script representing words and sounds. It could be used for languages other than Sumerian, including Akkadian, Elamite, and Hittite.

Cuneiform tablets preserve laws, myths, letters, contracts, and mathematical work. The Code of Hammurabi was written in cuneiform, but Hammurabi was Babylonian, not Sumerian. Cuneiform remained in use for more than three thousand years before alphabetic scripts gradually replaced it.