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
Ib (cuneiform) Ib (cuneiform) The cuneiform sign ib, (or ip) is a common-use sign in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", the Amarna letters, and other cuneiform texts. Its common usage is syllabic for "ib" (or "ip"), or alphabetic for "i" or "b"/"p"; the "i" is also exchanged for "e" when spelling specific words in the Akkadian language. Cuneiform "ib" also can be found as sumerogram "URTA", (a capital letter (majuscule)), and for example it is used in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" for the god's name: Ninurta, spelled NIN.URTA. Cuneiform "ib" has other sub-uses in the "Epic of Gilgamesh". The following can be found: