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
Ab (cuneiform) Ab (cuneiform) The cuneiform ab, and ap sign, (in the Akkadian language world, 'b' is unaspirated, formed with the lips, and 'p' is "aspirated"-(aspirated consonant, with the breath)) is the cuneiform sign used for the syllables "ab", or "ap", or the vowel and consonant usages of a, b, or p. In the Akkadian language b-and-p are interchangeable; also in cuneiform texts, any vowel of the "a, e, i, u" (no "o" in Akkadian) can be interchanged with another. Also for the 'ab/ap' sign, there is a capital letter (majuscule) usage as a sumerogram, found in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" for