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106 views2 pages

Untitled Document-5

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Writing Systems

The writing system, cuneiform, was first used by the ancient Mesopotamian people
called the Sumerians. The name cuneiform comes from the word “wedge-shaped” in
Latin. This is because scribes used a stylus pen which had an interesting shape to it,
so when it was pushed onto clay its outcome looked like a wedge figure. This alphabet
is so significant because it is known to be the first ever writing system and it dates back
to even before the Egyptian hieroglyphic. It was first developed around 3400 BCE, but
ultimately advanced by 3200 BCE. At first cuneiform was just pictographs with the
stylus and wedge shapes used to communicate the fundamentals of taxes and crops,
but eventually they turned into alphabetical letters and syllables to document everyday
events, literature, astronomy, and trade onto tablets of clay. Several of the most
well-known ancient Mesopotamian civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians,
Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians used cuneiform. When the
Akkadians modified cuneiform into their language, the Sumerians pictographs were
kept. In addition, the Akkadians widened the language in terms of pronunciation. For
example, they took the pictographic words, read phonetically as ud, tam, tú, par, laḫ, ḫiš
and translated it into the word sun. The old Akkadian language was the first type of
Semitic cuneiform. Once the Babylonian Empire conquered southern Mesopotamia
from the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonians adopted cuneiform. In the third millennium,
cuneiform started to spread outside of Mesopotamia and into southwestern Iran thanks
to the Elam civilization. The Elamites used cuneiform until much later into the 1st
millenium BCE. One way that the Elamites changed cuneiform was by reducing the
number of glyphs. Then the ancient language was passed around to the Hurrians in the
north of Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE, and then it was passed down to the Hittities in
current-day central Asia Minor. The Akkadian of Babylonia was a universal language in
the Middle East in the 2nd millennium. The writing system, cuneiform, was used for
over 3,000 years and developed over time, but eventually ended up being replaced by
the alphabets such as the Phoenician one.

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