Cuneiform Writing System

Timeline

1. c. -3200–-2900Uruk · SumerSumerian city-states developed a method of pressing wedge-shaped symbols with a reed stylus onto wet clay tablets, initially used for bookkeeping and administrative marks, which gradually evolved into a writing system combining ideographic and phonetic elements.
2. c. -2300–-539Mesopotamia · MesopotamiaCuneiform was used to write Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and many other languages, becoming the common writing medium for the administration, law, literature, and astronomical records of Near East empires, and scribal school systems matured alongside it.
3. c. -500–1Mesopotamia · MesopotamiaWith the spread of writing systems such as the Aramaic alphabet, the use of cuneiform narrowed increasingly, surviving only sporadically in astronomy and religious traditions, and dying out completely around the first century CE, until it was deciphered again in the nineteenth century.