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,
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (online in 2002), the Hermitage Museum and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (online in 2003), and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. A second phase from 2004 to 2006 was federally funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, during which time it focused on new educational components and scalable access systems to the data. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is an international digital library project aimed at putting text and images of an estimated 500,000 recovered cuneiform tablets created from between