THE DEVELOPMENT OF CUNEIFORM

Writing began with pictures, or pictographs as they are usually called, which are crude drawings which represent an actual object or thing. Eventually, certain pictures came to represent an idea or concept connected to the original object/thing. This type of symbol is called an "ideograph” since it has expanded from representing a solid object to representing an abstract idea. In the final stage the symbol comes to represent a sound – usually the beginning sound of the object it was originally picturing.                            

Eventually, the pictographs were stylized, rotated and impressed in clay with a wedge shaped stylus to become the script known as Cuneiform.   

Ancient Sumerian was a “language isolate”—it is not related to any other language that we know of. But Akaadian, the language of the people who set up the very first empire and who conquered Sumer (under the leader Sargon), was a Semitic* language. The Akaadians adopted cuneiform writing to their own language and cuneiform began spreading all over with different groups of people using it to write their own language down. In this same way we use the Roman alphabet, but so also do the Spanish, the French, and the Germans – all different languages using the same symbols, or letters, to write down the sounds of their words.

  Sumerians loved riddles: Here's an actual riddle from ancient Sumer:  “What is a house that one enters blind but leaves seeing?" (answer below)