The System of Writing

The System of Writing The sound that a cuneiform sign represented was not a single consonant or vowel (such as m or a in the English alphabet), but syllables (say, - put -, or - la -, or – in -). Thus, the signs that a Mesopotamian scribe had * Cuneiform is derived from the Latin words cuneus , meaning ‘wedge’ and forma, meaning ‘shape’. A clay tablet written on both sides in cuneiform. It is a mathematical exercise – you can see a triangle and lines across the triangle on the top of the obverse side. You can see that the letters have been pressed into the clay. to learn ran into hundreds, and he had to be able to handle a wet tablet and get it written before it dried. So, writing was a skilled craft but, more important, it was an enormous intellectual achievement, conveying in visual form the system of sounds of a particular language.