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
Zu (cuneiform) Zu (cuneiform) Cuneiform zu, (also sú, ṣú, and sumerogram ZU (capital letter majuscule)), is an uncommon-use sign in the 1350s BC Amarna letters, the "Epic of Gilgamesh", and other cuneiform texts. Alphabetically, it could conceivably be used for letters "z", "s", "ṣ", or "u"; however in the Amarna letters it is used mostly for "personal names" or "geographical names". In the "Epic of Gilgamesh", sumerogram "ZU", is used to spell the name of god Ninazu, (a name of god Tammuz, two times, Chapter XII, 28, 47). In the "Epic", "ZU" is also used as a logogram, "ZU.AB", for Akkadian language