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Finally, cuneiform became a general-purpose writing system with logograms, syllables, and numerals. From the 26th century BCE, the system was adapted to write the Akkadian language, and from there to others, such as Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets, is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. c. 2600 BC ). [ 40 ]
A link exists between 6,000-year-old engravings on cylindrical seals used on clay tablets and cuneiform, the world’s oldest writing system, according to new research.
Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features.. The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the languages in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name.
Researchers have made another major stride in understanding humanity’s origins of writing. In Mesopotamia, the birthplace of civilization, the earliest known writing system started around 3,000 BCE.
The following is a list of the world's oldest surviving physical documents. Each entry is the most ancient of each language or civilization. For example, the Narmer Palette may be the most ancient from Egypt, but there are many other surviving written documents from Egypt later than the Narmer Palette but still more ancient than the Missal of Silos.
An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text date to c. 1500 BC, [1] while the oldest known manuscripts date to c. 1040 AD. [2] Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD. [3]
A grapheme is the basic functional unit of a writing system. Graphemes are generally defined as minimally significant elements which, when taken together, comprise the set of symbols from which texts may be constructed. [13] All writing systems require a set of defined graphemes, collectively called a script. [14]