The book is Hammer’s account of the deciphering of cuneiform, the oldest known writing system. Cuneiform was invented in around 3400 BC in Mesopotamia. It was used for… ...

The Greek alphabet, believed to have emerged in the eighth century BC, is undergoing a reevaluation by Leiden University.

A collection of artefacts collected 2,500 years ago in modern-day Iraq reveal the forgotten world of Mesopotamia, home to ...

The earliest cuneiform tablets are almost ... One hard-to-learn script, two hard-to-learn languages and the whole of ancient Mesopotamia is at your feet.

found in the ruins of Nimrud (present-day Iraq). These tablets, dating to the 7th century BCE, represent the first material evidence of cuneiform writing on wax. The tablets ...

Ancient Chinese writing developed early in the second millennium ... which may have influenced Mesopotamian cuneiform. The proto-Sinaitic script was widely thought to be the oldest alphabet ...

JANE SWEENEY/GETTY IMAGES The tablets were in Akkadian, an ancient language written in cuneiform script. Its characters ... by moments of revelation. In his first decade working at the museum ...

Alongside the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform writing is the world's oldest known writing system that can be deciphered. The earliest Mesopotamian clay tablets containing pictorial script date ...

Professor Kulakoglu explains that many of the words, although Assyrian in origin -- a Semitic language considered an ancestor ...

Many of the fragments bore cuneiform hieroglyphs ... world's leading expert in the ancient Akkadian language and its fiendishly difficult script, write the first true history of Mesopotamia's ...