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
Ri (cuneiform) sumerogram "SÀR" (an equivalent sumerogram to mean LUGAL) to be combined with "RI" to make "sarru" for king. ('The King', as an appellation is sometimes created by adding [[ma (cuneiform)]], suffix to the end of a name (Lugal-ma.) [[Category:Akkadian language]] [[Category:Cuneiform signs, Amarna letters]] Ri (cuneiform) [[File:B142ellst.png|437px|left|thumb|Cuneiform sign for ri, re, dal, tal, ṭal, and as [[sumerogram]] RI, (sign uses from the "[[Epic of Gilgamesh]]").]] [[File:Amarna letter mp3h8878.jpg|thumb|right|315px|[[Amarna letter EA 365]]-("Reverse"), [[Biridiya]] to Pharaoh, ""Furnishing [[Corvée]] Workers"", with usage of cuneiform re in the spelling of "erēsu", "to cultivate" ([[te (cuneiform)|te]]-[[ir (cuneiform)|er]]-ri-šu-[[na (cuneiform)|na]]), 3rd character, 6th line from top (line