Cuneiform Cuneiform Cuneiform or Sumerian cuneiform, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus. The name "cuneiform" itself simply means "wedge shaped". Emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC (the Uruk IV period) to convey the Sumerian language, which was a language isolate, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms, stemming from an earlier system of shaped tokens used for accounting. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as
Id (cuneiform) Ninurta, spelled NIN.URTA. Cuneiform "ib" has other sub-uses in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". The following can be found: "eb"--(4) times, "ep"--(9), "ib"--(114), "ip"--(45), and "URTA"--(4) times. The cuneiform "ib" cuneiform character (no. 535) is built in a 'rectangular box form', sitting upon a long horizontal stroke. It contains the 2-verticals at right and 1-vertical at left. Three other signs are similarly built, cuneiform "ur" is the mirror image of "ib"/"ip", but with the two verticals at left. The "lu (cuneiform)" sign is identical to "ib", but instead of 1-short vertical in the center, "lu" contains 3-short verticals in the center.