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
Na (cuneiform) Na (cuneiform) The cuneiform na sign is a common, multi-use sign, a syllabic for "na", and an alphabetic sign used for "n", or "a"; it is common in both the "Epic of Gilgamesh" over hundreds of years, and the 1350 BC Amarna letters. In the "Epic of Gilgamesh" it also has sumerogramic (capital letter (majuscule)) usage for NA. An example usage for "NA" in the Epic is for the spelling of "NA.GAD", (also "LÚ.NA.GAD", and the plural "LÚ.NA.GAD.MEŠ"), for Akkadian language "nāqidu", ""herdsman"". The usage for "NA" in herdsman is only for 3 spellings. The commonness of cuneiform "na", in