Around 4000 years BC, in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valley, the Sumerians developed a form of writing using hundreds of wedge-like strokes and characters, which were symbols for words and syllables. What was this writing called?

The ancient Sumerians developed one of the world's earliest known writing systems in Mesopotamia. This script gets its name from the Latin word "cuneus," which means "wedge." This is a fitting description, as scribes used a reed stylus to press wedge-shaped marks into wet clay tablets, which were then dried or baked to create a permanent record. This method of writing was faster and easier than carving intricate pictures, allowing for more efficient record-keeping. The resulting script was a complex system of hundreds of signs.

Initially, the script was composed of pictographs, which were simple drawings of objects used primarily for accounting purposes, like tracking grain or livestock. Over centuries, these symbols became more abstract and stylized, evolving to represent not just whole words but also the sounds of syllables. This crucial development allowed for the recording of spoken language with much greater nuance. It enabled the Sumerians and later civilizations to write down everything from legal codes and business transactions to epic literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This revolutionary writing system was so effective that it was adopted and adapted by numerous other cultures throughout the ancient Near East. For over 3,000 years, languages such as Akkadian, Babylonian, and Hittite were written using these same wedge-shaped strokes. The durability of the clay tablets has allowed vast libraries of these ancient records to survive, giving modern historians incredible insight into the daily life, history, and mythology of these early civilizations.