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
Lu (cuneiform) to Akkadian language, ""lullû"", for English language, "(primitive) man"; "DAB" transposes to ṣabātu, English for "to seize, capture". The usage numbers for "lu" (sign no. 537) in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" are as follows: "dab"-(2) times, "dap"-(4), "dib"-(1), "lu"-(293), "tep"-(1), "tàb"-(1), "tib"-(4), "DAB"-(4), "DIB"-(1), "LU"-(9), "UDU"-(1). The "lu" cuneiform sign is within a small group of signs that are composed of 1- or 2-vertical strokes (at right or left), the other signs being no. 535 Ib (cuneiform), no. 536 ku (cuneiform) (only 1-vertical, left and right), no. 575 ur (cuneiform), and gáb (cuneiform). Besides "ša" usage in word components of