Definition
Cuneiform is the writing system developed by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE. Its name comes from the Latin cuneus, 'wedge', because the script was inscribed into wet clay with the trimmed end of a reed, producing characteristic wedge-shaped marks. It is the earliest known full script — a system capable, eventually, of recording any utterance in the spoken language.
Cuneiform began as a partial script for accounting — tallies of grain, livestock, and labour owed to the temple — and evolved over centuries into a general-purpose writing system used for law (including Hammurabi's Code), literature (the Epic of Gilgamesh), diplomacy, and instruction.
Why it matters
How it works
Cuneiform is mixed in type. Some signs are logograms (one sign per word), some are syllabograms (one sign per syllable), and some are determinatives (silent markers that classify the word that follows — god, country, wood). A single sign may serve in different roles in different contexts. Scribes trained for years to read it fluently.
That complexity is part of why writing in early states was a specialist craft. Literacy was rare, scribes formed a professional class, and the priesthood and palace controlled the schools. Writing was not an everyday tool — it was an instrument of administration concentrated in a few hands.