Cuneiform Writing | Importance, Symbols & History

Over time, cuneiform writing became rebus writing, meaning that each symbol stopped representing a concept and started representing a particular sound. Around this time, the symbols became more abstract and their number was reduced to a number ranging from 400-600 rather than 1,000. A writing system with phonetic ties was significantly more flexible, easier to learn and read, and easier to write. Syllabic symbols could then be more easily combined to create words and sentences that did not rely on as much reader interpretation.

Cuneiform symbols changed over time to become more abstract

When it was first created, cuneiform was written in columns from top to bottom. Early in its history, this changed to lines of left-to-right writing, which remained the case for the remainder of cuneiform's lifespan. Writing systems around the world have always had a variety of directional orientations: Arabic is written right-to-left, Egyptian hieroglyphs were often written right-to-left and left-to-right, and Chinese and Japanese are written either left-to-right or top to bottom.

In the story, Gilgamesh is a kind of demigod. He meets a wild man named Enkidu with whom he forms a close bond. The two of them fight many terrible monsters together before Enkidu is killed. Gilgamesh mourns the loss of his friend and then goes on a quest for immortality. His quest ultimately fails and he returns to the city of Uruk, of which he is the ruler. The Epic of Gilgamesh was first translated in 1872, but because of the condition of the tablets, there are some gaps in the poem. The 1872 translation was also fragmentary; a full translation of all existing parts of the poem was not produced until several years later. Today, The Epic of Gilgamesh is heralded as the first example of human literary achievement.

Cuneiform writing from the library of Ashurbanipal

The library of Ashurbanipal is another extremely important collection of cuneiform examples. It consists of around 30,000 clay tablets inscribed with Mesopotamian cuneiform. These works once belonged to a king named Ashurbanipal. Today, they are one of the richest sources of information about life in ancient Sumer. Some of the tablets are on display in the British Museum, while others are still being studied and translated by scholars. Other collections of cuneiform tablets have been found in Mari and Ebla in Syria and in Girsu and Sippar, Iraq. Many of these tablets have yet to be fully translated.

Mesopotamian History and Culture

The ability to translate cuneiform gives historians and scholars a window into primary sources of ancient Sumerian history, and the history of other places where cuneiform writing was used. It can tell modern readers what kinds of goods were being traded, what kind of economic system was in place, and details about the social structure of society. Some texts have religious references that shed light on Sumerian culture and worship practices. The fact that cuneiform was used over such a long period of time gives linguists the ability to study linguistic evolution over a long period and to explore how different groups of speakers' dialects shaped their writing styles. Prior to the first translations of cuneiform, most of the information about ancient Mesopotamia and other regions came from the Bible or from classical sources rather than from the actual people who were living there, making cuneiform an extraordinarily valuable commodity for historians today.

Literary History

An image of Gilgamesh, the hero of the famous ancient Sumerian epic poem

The Epic of Gilgamesh and other works written in cuneiform have revolutionized literary history. They have changed scholars' ideas of when and how poetic traditions developed and how and why people tell stories. Since its translation, The Epic of Gilgamesh has gone on to inspire many literary works that want to harken back to that ancient tradition, as well as a vast amount of literary scholarship. The poem also sheds light on the relationship between literature and religion, as Gilgamesh was a religious figure in ancient Sumer as well as a historical and literary one. The story told in The Epic of Gilgamesh did not originate on clay tablets; it was likely a story told for centuries before it was ever written down.

Although it originally consisted of over 1,000 characters, cuneiform was eventually reduced to 400-600 characters when it became a phonetic instead of logographic writing style. In its most recognizable (and phonetic) form, cuneiform was written using combinations of wedges and lines that were created by pushing a reed stylus into clay tablets. Cuneiform was used until the first century CE before eventually being replaced by the Phoenician alphabet and other writing systems.