Cuneiform stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were the Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish. Surviving records only very gradually become less fragmentary and more complete for the following reigns, but by the end of the pre-Sargonic period,
Ab (cuneiform) AB, Akkadian language for "šību", "elder". In the corpus of the Amarna letters, which is another common use place for 'ab/ap', the name of some of the authors of letters to the Pharaoh, are for example Labaya, and Ayyab. In both cases the use is syllabic for "ab". The usage numbers for the "ab" cuneiform sign in the twelve, Tablets I-XII, of the "Epic of Gilgamesh", are as follows: ab-(11), ap-(28), and sumerogram AB-(12); for "šību", Akkadian language for "elder", only two spellings use "AB"; six other spelliings of "šību" are syllabic/alphabetic. Ab (cuneiform) The cuneiform ab, and ap sign,