Wedge Shaped Writing

In the late 4th millennium BC a form of writing now called cuneiform (which means wedge-shaped) arose in Mesopotamia amongst a people known as the Sumerians. A cuneiform sign is composed of at least one of three basic wedges, which can be combined to create infinitely complicated signs.

By pressing the end of a reed stylus into moist clay, the Sumerians were able to draw. Initially, what they drew were just pictures that could stand for an object, or the action which that object did. For example, a picture of a mouth could mean either the noun ‘mouth’ or the verb ‘to speak’.

Eventually the picture could also be the syllable(s) in the word which the picture represented. Since the Sumerian word for ‘mouth’ was ka, the same sign could be used for writing the syllable ka in another word. Over many centuries a complicated system of writing developed in which the pictures – which eventually became so stylized as to be unrecognizable as such - could represent either whole words (called ideograms) or individual syllables (known as syllabograms).