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Writing: Mesopotamia
 Return to Writing
At the end of the fourth millennium B.C. a pictographic system (pictures used to symbolize a word or phrase) was developed in the cities of southern Mesopotamia for recording allocations of rations and transfer of commodities on clay tablets. At the city of Uruk, where the majority have been discovered, these tablets had been thrown into the foundation fill of an area rebuilt around 3000 B.C. The tablets have been divided by scholars into an early and later group based on the style of the pictographs. The later group is more complex; their meaning is clearer, and the Sumerian language appears to be represented. The pictographs are composed of numerous wedge-shaped or "cuneiform" signs made by repeatedly pressing a wedge-shaped instrument (usually a cut reed) into the clay. By the mid-third millennium B.C., cuneiform writing began to be used to record people's names and professions inscribed on votive objects as well as Sumerian poetry and hymns on clay tablets. Royal monuments increasingly included longer inscriptions giving information about political events. In the same period, cuneiform was adopted to record other languages in regions beyond southern Mesopotamia, such as Susa in southwestern Iran and the city-states of Syria.
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