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Cuneiform

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk, which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE and allowed for the creation of literature.

The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for wedge owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing. In cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like imprints that represent word-signs (pictographs) and, later, phonograms or word-concepts (closer to a modern-day understanding of a word). All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations used cuneiform until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic script at some point after 100 BCE, including:

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