Cuneiform, the oldest identified writing system, defied deciphering – until 1857. What happened then makes a terrific read, ...

The earliest known writing system, called cuneiform, was invented around 3100 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. Before cuneiform, however, humans used a simpler writing system called proto-cuneiform that ...

The finding reinforces an idea proposed in earlier research: that cuneiform script — which was developed in early Mesopotamia around 3100 B.C. and is thought to be the earliest writing system ...

A team of researchers from the British Museum, led by Diego Tamburini, recently examined the tablet fragments using advanced ...

Fragment of a Neo-Assyrian tablet preserving wax, in the British Museum. ( The Trustees of the British Museum) The writing ...

It is written in cuneiform, the oldest known writing in the world, a non-alphabetic kind of writing that grew out of a simple system of pictographs into a flexible medium with which the Sumerian ...

Cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of written expression and so represents a huge leap forward by human kind. This writing system was in use for more than 30 centuries and was finally replaced ...

Writing and trade are deeply intertwined, and some of the oldest surviving cuneiform writing was used in ancient Mesopotamia to keep records of the buying and selling of goods. In ancient ...