The Invention of Cuneiform Writing In Mesopotamia

The invention of writing is one of the greatest revolutions to have occurred in all of human history. This statement is in no way superlative, because it was literally with the invention of cuneiform writing that we mark the earliest beginning of the historical period. Only after the invention of writing (the first form of which was cuneiform writing) did humanity begin to create and accumulate written documentation of life, thought, culture, wisdom and religion, political events and major events in national and ultimately international history, which literally is the historical record.

Though this did not happen immediately, and as we will cover in the articles of this series on the Invention of Writing (specifically the invention and evolution of cuneiform writing which began in the Near East) we will see that writing was not invented for the purposes of literature, recording history, or even religion. It was invented for administrative and bureaucratic purposes – literally so that early officials and community leaders could run the city, and feed the population, as well as trade with neighboring communities.

Furthermore it was actually almost 1000 years from the invention of writing until it was used to record aspects of daily life in a way that were actually relevant and useful to modern historians. At first we have brief inscriptions, such as the name “Enmebaragisi” on fragments of two alabaster vases found in the ancient city of Nippur, which was for much of Mesopotamian history the seat of religious power. Nothing more than this, just a name, which in itself would be nearly irrelevant to us (except perhaps as an example of what ancient people called one another and named their children, though without further documentation we couldn’t know if this name was common, rare, or absurd). But from later records (Enmebaragisi is featured in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian King List, and inscriptions from Nippur which attest that he built the first temple of Nippur) we gain more of his life and deeds. Thus we know that he is the first archaeologically confirmed historical personage, was the King of the city of Kish, and is the first confirmed Sumerian king, thanks to writing.

Though writing ultimately flourished, and these brief inscriptions which on the one hand give us nothing, but on the other, far more than we could have otherwise hoped, expanded into long and sophisticated texts. They eventually recorded deeds of the king, qualities of the king, major political events, celestial events (early astronomy), mathematical texts, the outcomes of battles, as well as mythologies and legendary histories dealing with gods, kings, heroes and archaic events so far back in memory as to be ethereal (such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the story of Etana’s Flight to Heaven, or the Enuma Elish) as well as some original compositions. The first composer of original literary work in history (that we know of) was a woman by the name of Enheduanna, in the land of modern Iraq over 4000 years ago (who was the daughter of Sargon the Great).

The Impact of Cuneiform Writing

It is hard to estimate the true impact that cuneiform writing had on the evolution of civilization. It laid the foundation for literature, for the recording of our myths, legends, and ancestral stories. As previously stated, history itself is literally a product of the invention of writing, for the beginning of history is defined as the period when written documents emerged.

Just think of what the world might look like if we never invented the technology of the written word – or if it was invented later than it was. We would know almost nothing of our ancient ancestors. The Sumerians would be completely lost to us, as would the Akkadians, Egyptians, the peoples of Anatolia, and the Bible may have never been recorded. Indeed we would still unearth their homes, temples, palaces, and tombs, but would know nothing of the people themselves. We would not periodically dig up ancient artifacts in long-lost scripts and languages (like cuneiform writing once was) spending years and decades of admirable perseverance guided by the towering intellect, creativity, and insight of great scholars only to have entire worlds open up before us.

So it was with the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform writing. Once we learned to read these strange, incomprehensibly archaic glyphs composed of thin triangle-shaped impressions, we not only discovered a brand new people and language lost to history, the Sumerians, we discovered multiple: the Babylonians, Akkadians, Kassites, Assyrians, Hurrians, Persians, Hittites and all others who used cuneiform writing. Some of them we knew of already due to Biblical (and other ancient) references. However, once their own cuneiform writing, language, and hordes of documents were uncovered, they spoke to us directly from the mists of time, being revealed to us as a colorful, deep, complex, and even strange people with a unique character, unlike the caricature of them we receive from the brief passages of the Bible and other histories.

I am not denouncing the Bible, for it’s an important historical document. Just that brief references and limited data on anything by the very nature of brevity absolutely cannot give us a real and complete picture of anything even slightly complex. We were (and are still) lucky to have at least had the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible which was the source material for the Old Testament) because it in its own right preserved a great deal that would have otherwise been lost. Respect.

How incredible that we could in the meandering course of history forget things of such importance. How chilling the idea that we have certainly forgotten things of even greater importance, which we will hopefully one day recover from oblivion. For millennia people were driving around on wheels in carts and carriages with no recollection of the people who invented the wheel: the Sumerians. Laying the foundation of homes, temples, cathedrals, and schools with bricks, without remembering the people who invented the brick: the Sumerians. Even the way in which we write (from left to right) and the way we horizontally line our paper is a tradition initiated some 5000 years ago. So much of what we do today has its roots in these earliest of times, and to forget it is to lose a precious connection.

So many new avenues and perspectives were opened up to us which utterly transformed the worldview of humanity which was once dominated by the narrow historical range and perspective of the Bible (because Biblical history is generally seen only through the eyes of a single people). Humans have lost so much history simply because of a lack of dedication to preserve it, in some cases. Though in other cases history was lost in spite of the best intentions of dedicated people. Though this is understandable. What does it matter how people long dead for thousands of years ago lived and thought and struggled, when we are still struggling today? Who cares about ancient people when we have bills to pay, children to feed, and dreams to fulfill? When your country is being decimated by bombs, when there is violence on the street and even walking to school is hazardous, there are greater concerns.

Yet we must still strive to remember our roots, and to remember where we came from for ultimately this is a process that will bring us all back to the same place, the same point of origin, where we can find common ground in the knowledge that we are one people. The invention of cuneiform writing began the recording and accumulation of information and knowledge, of history, events, and observations. This enabled each generation to build upon the works of their predecessors, instead of starting from scratch. And we can trace back our roots of the legal system, educational systems, government and politics, religious institutions, many themes and motifs in myth and legend, writing practices, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, and various forms of technology (the wheel, working with bricks, metallurgy, farming and agriculture) back to these times. Specifically back to the culture who gave us the written word in the form of cuneiform writing: the Sumerians.

The Inventions and Proliferation of Writing

As far as we know, there might only be three instances of the invention of writing in the entirety of human history: the first took place in Mesopotamia, in the southern alluvial plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the country known as Sumer, whose southern edge borders the Persian Gulf. This is where writing seems to have began c.3350 BCE with the etching of pictographic symbols (picture-words) in clay, with a stylus made out of a cut-reed that they fetched themselves from the river. This was the first invention of writing.

Then from Sumer the skill most likely spread to Egypt who were the next people to employ writing. However, there is some debate over whether the ancient Egyptians invented writing independently. I personally believe it unlikely that they did, simply because of the fact that we know from archaeology that proto-writing was invented in Sumer at least a couple centuries before Egypt, though it was not yet true writing at that time. Yet once the Sumerians developed the idea into a script and into true writing, then all of the sudden it was there in Egypt at about the same time. Therefore transmission from the first location where the oldest examples of writing have been found (Sumer) to the second location (Egypt) seems more likely.

Though to the Egyptians credit, if they adopted Sumerian cuneiform writing at all, then they did so only in concept. Egyptian hieroglyphs are unique, which is precisely why we are so unsure about who to assign the credit (in concept) for the invention of Egyptian writing. They had a phonetic use from the very beginning, which the Sumerians developed over centuries, which is another reason why it is probable that the technology was transmitted from the Sumerians to the Egyptians. Though, as I said, this is a point contested by scholars, and while Egyptologists will perhaps be understandably biased on the subject, the fact of the matter is that we are not completely certain one way or the other.

A Closeup of a Cuneiform Inscription commissioned by Xrexes on a cliff face in Van Castle (Van Kalesi), Van, Turkey. Credit: Alex Jones CC-SA-2.0.

In the Near East cuneiform writing spread in every direction like an infection, just like the arts of civilization necessary to build the first cities did when they were invented in Sumer c.3500 BCE. Cuneiform writing went north to the Akkadians, who were the semitic (language) speaking contemporaries of the Sumerians. Afterwards cuneiform writing was passed down to all peoples of the region who were both descendants and cousins of the original dominant cultures of the region (at least culturally, if not directly by blood) such as: the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Elamites and Kassites to name a fraction. Each speaking their own tongues, all of which were unrelated to Sumerian, though the powerful cuneiform was capable of recording any language by this time.

Cuneiform writing also spread north into Anatolia to the Caucasian Hurrians, as well as to the Indo-European Hittites of Hatti Land (in central Anatolia). Cuneiform script was gradually replaced during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-612 BCE) as by this time the Phoenician alphabetic script which literally became our modern alphabet, after first becoming the Hebrew, then Greek, then Roman alphabets ( which is called the Proto-Canannite / Proto-Sinaitic script). However by 100 CE cuneiform writing had been impressed onto clay for the last time, which is when it was lost to memory. That is, before it was deciphered again by scholars and savants of Europe in the 1800’s CE.

The Phoenician script was invented closer to 1500 BCE, taking maybe around 800 years to uproot the ancestral cuneiform tradition. Though the Phoenician script was derived from cuneiform writing, so 1500 BCE marks the transition from cuneiform writing to the development of the modern alphabet, which took place in the land of Lebanon.

As previously stated Proto-Canaanite literally became the Hebrew alphabet, and the Greek alphabet (with a couple notable changes) before being transmitted to the Etruscans in Italy, from whom it reached the Romans and was used for Latin, from whence it reaches all modern peoples who speak, read, and write in Latin based languages or using the Latin script (French, German, English, Spanish, etc). Our alphabet was once cuneiform writing. Indeed, each symbol of the words of this article are tied in a direct lineage to ancient Sumer, regardless of how much change and evolution has occurred in the mean time.

The next invention of writing took place in China c.1400 BCE. It was invented by the Shang culture and people of China, who were the dominant culture in the region at the time. Their first uses of writing occur on the backs of tortoise shells, where they scratched glyphs that had something to do with a form of divination using turtle shells. The Shang of ancient China almost certainly invented writing independently. However…

With great respect to the Chinese (whose script I know to some degree, in its use for both the Chinese and Japanese languages) I believe that it is possible that the the concept of writing reached China from the cuneiform writing of the Near East, simply because there is almost 2000 years between the invention of cuneiform writing in Sumer (3350 BCE) to its invention in China (1400 BCE).

2000 years is a long time, and we are quite sure that cuneiform writing made it to India before 1400 BCE. All we need is a couple of adventurous travelers to have crossed the Himalayas, or circumvented them by land around to the north, or by sea to the south, entering China and transmitting the idea through the locals of “strange symbols that can hold words when etched on objects like stone or pottery” which would have been a crazy, magical, mysterious idea to many which could have very well moved through the population. Though some of a scholarly, rational bent might have understood the truth, and attempted their own application of the concept.

2000 years is long enough for contact to have been made, especially when we know that peoples from the Ural Mountain regions who entered the Near East (the Cimmerians) had ancestry linking them both with Europe and East Asia from much more ancient times through the Eurasian Steppe which connected East and West, a highway of sorts for certain ancient nomadic people. Though with respect to the Chinese and modern scholars, without further information and more developed ideas, let us say the Chinese invented writing independently.

The last invention of writing to have occurred independently of cuneiform writing was achieved by the Olmecs / Maya in Central America by about 300 BCE. A number of writing systems were developed in Central America around 600 BCE. Though it wasn’t until the Mayans just before the Classical Period of Mayan civilization (which was their heyday lasting from about 250 BCE to 900 CE) when they had developed and utilized a powerful and sophisticated script which was already in use perhaps by as early as 300 BCE.

The Main Phases of Cuneiform Writing

A clay bulla with tokens, excavated at the Tell of the Acropolis in the city of Susa, Elam. Uruk Period. Excavated between 1933-1939 by Roland de Mecquenem. Sb 1932. Public Domain.

First throughout the Near East we have the Bullae phase (8000-3200 BCE) which was an early system of accounting using clay spheres and small clay (or stone) objects of various – yet specific and intentional – shapes and sizes. Then in the Late Uruk Period of Sumer after the city had been invented, writing emerged as a pictographic script that we call Proto-Cuneiform lasting from about 3350 – 2900 BCE, which was used for bureaucratic purposes.

After 2900 BCE (and definitely by 2400 BCE) the script developed into true writing that we call Cuneiform Writing which became a scholarly, scribal, cultural, and even religious tradition (in that cuneiform was the script for used for religious purposes) which remained unbroken from about 2900 BCE to around 100 CE when we have the last clay tablet impressed with Sumerian cuneiform glyphs. Cuneiform lasted for about 3000 years. This is the true meaning of ancient. (All of us in the west are babies by comparison, our culture so young, yet we are so certain in it.) Though we also see the development of the early phase of the alphabet by 1500 BCE which gradually took root and led the written word down a different pathway, away from the character theory still practiced in Asia towards the modern phonetic script practiced basically be the rest of the world east of the Himalayas.

Each of these phases of writing we cover in detail in these articles:

1. Bullae: The Archaic System of Accounting in the Near East
2. Proto-Cuneiform :: The invention of Writing in the Uruk Period
3. Cuneiform :: The Most Powerful Script Ever Devised

There is a great deal to learn about this single branch, and I personally have a couple pieces to add to this section in the future, though which are not relevant at this time. This should provide a fair introduction and relatively sophisticated foray into the subject, which for many, is all they will ever want/need to know!

[For a complete bibliography and further reading for this series, please refer to the Historical Resources section.]