It’s not a language. It’s not an alphabet, either, exactly. But if you want to read the original Epic of Gilgamesh, or study the trade records of the ancient Sumerians, cuneiform is the only game in ...

In 1849 archaeologists found 14 clay tablets with cuneiform writing during excavations in Iraq, the translation of these ...

Cuneiform tablets have been found in multiple Sumerian archaeological sites. ( Buried for 4,000 years, this ancient culture could expand the 'Cradle of Civilization'.

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq.

Tablets preserve centuries of text Cuneiform: The Sumerians were prodigious writers, and millions of their tablets survive, proving etched clay to be history’s most enduring form of record-keeping.

The root of cuneiform lies in tokens, or chits, used by Sumerians to convey information. For example, they would take a stone and declare it a representation for something else. A sheep, say.

This tablet has an account in Sumerian cuneiform describing the receipt of oxen The Egyptians used to believe that literacy was divine, a gift from baboon-faced Thoth, the god of knowledge ...

A Sumerian clay tablet from around 3200 B.C. is inscribed in wedgelike cuneiform with a list of professions. Credit... Olaf Tessmer, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin ...

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq.

By 1600 BC, no Sumerian speakers were alive, but cuneiform was still used for another thousand years. Today, it strikes us a somehow hauntingly familiar: cool, hard, ...