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
Diš (cuneiform) the "large-angled-stroke", type 2; (the long stroke of the sign is slightly, or majorly, foreshortened. In the Amarna letters, often down to 50 % of the "full stroke".). The high quality photo of EA 364, line 8, shows the length about 3/4 of a full stroke-length. The "ana", ("diš") sign usage in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" is as follows: "ana"-(151 times); "diš"-(6); "tiš"-(6); and 1-(87 times). Diš (cuneiform) The cuneiform sign has many uses in cuneiform texts. In the Amarna letters it is commonly used to denote "Male individuals". (Women are denoted by sal (cuneiform), . ) The sign is