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
Ni (cuneiform) Ni (cuneiform) The cuneiform sign ni, is a common-use sign of the Amarna letters, the "Epic of Gilgamesh," and other cuneiform texts. It has a secondary sub-use in the Amarna letters for addressing the Pharaoh, from the vassal states of Canaan. The address to the Pharaoh is often 'King-Lord-Mine': "LUGAL, EN-ia" which has many varieties of expression. "LUGAL" is Akkadian language for "Šarru", English "king", and "EN" in Akkadian is "bēlu", for "Lord", (thus "King, Lord-Mine"). In some Amarna letters the sub-use of "ni" is "lí", for spelling "bēlu", "be-lí" often . There are other sub-uses of "ni" (see "Epic