The Writing System
A final achievement of Ancient Mesopotamia would be their highly developed writing system. the Sumerians created a written language called cuneiform. This name comes from the Latin word for “wedge”. The Sumerians used a wedged-shaped stylus to etch their writing in clay tables. Sumerians developed cuneiform around 2400 B.C.E. The earliest examples of cuneiform show that it was used to record information about the goods Sumerians exchanged with one another. At first, they used as many as 2,000 symbols to stand for ideas and sounds. Over time, they were able to reduce this number to 700. Cuneiform was based on an earlier, simpler form of writing that used pictographs. Scribes drew the symbols with a sharpened reed on wet clay. When the clay dried, the marks became a permanent record.
A final achievement of Ancient Mesopotamia would be their highly developed writing system. the Sumerians created a written language called cuneiform. This name comes from the Latin word for “wedge”. The Sumerians used a wedged-shaped stylus to etch their writing in clay tables. Sumerians developed cuneiform around 2400 B.C.E. The earliest examples of cuneiform show that it was used to record information about the goods Sumerians exchanged with one another. At first, they used as many as 2,000 symbols to stand for ideas and sounds. Over time, they were able to reduce this number to 700. Cuneiform was based on an earlier, simpler form of writing that used pictographs. Scribes drew the symbols with a sharpened reed on wet clay. When the clay dried, the marks became a permanent record.