What Is The Writing System That Was Developed By The Sumerians?

WRITING SYSTEM – In this topic, we will now know the answer to the question: “What is the writing system that was developed by the Sumerians?

WRITING SYSTEM
Image from: University of Oxford

The Sumerians, according to Ancient.eu, are people in Mesopotamia who flourished in 4100 to 1750 BCE. The name came from the word that means “country”, albeit a region.

These are the southern version of the Akkadians who cgave the name Sumer to the latter, which means “land of the civilized kings”.

Now the question is : What is the writing system that was developed by the Sumerians? And the answer is a wedged writing system called “Cuneiform

Cuneiform

WRITING SYSTEM
Image from: University of Oxford

The name comes from the Latin word “cuneus” which means “wedge”, in lieu of the wedge-shaped style. The tool known as stylus is pressed onto soft clay to produce wedge-like impressions that symbolizes word-signs called pictographs.

They eventually developed the system and phonograms or “word-concepts” are used. All Mesopotamian civilizations used this until it was abandoned somewhere after 100 BCE.

Civilizations that uses Cuneiform

  • Sumerians
  • Akkadians
  • Babylonians
  • Elamites
  • Hatti
  • Hittites
  • Assyrians
  • Hurrians 

The early versions of cuneiform (proto-cuneiform) were usually pictorial as the addressed subjects were usually more concrete and visible.

In 3000 BCE, the representations were more simple and the strokes conveyed word-concepts rather then word-signs.

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