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
Ia (cuneiform) letters. Specific examples of the suffix form can be especially seen in letters from Alashiya, and Tushratta, the king of Mitanni, (Tushratta letters EA 19, EA 26, and EA 28; Alashiya letter EA 35). In those letters, the suffix "-ia" is used especially with the word 'brother': "Brother-mine", the cuneiform for brother being used as the sumerogram: ŠEŠ (brother Sumerogram), since šeš (cuneiform) in the Epic of Gilgamesh is also used for: "sis", "šes", "šeš", "šiš", and "ŠEŠ (brother Sumerogram)". Ia (cuneiform) The cuneiform ia sign, is a combined sign, containing i (cuneiform) ligatured with a (cuneiform); it has the