Question

Describe the development of cuneiform by the Sumerians. What word is symbolized in the image below?
Left, a crude drawing of an animal's head with horns. Right, two wedge symbols point to the right. One wedge symbol points down. Two small wedge symbols point to the right and slightly down.

Answer 1

Short history of how Sumerian cuneiform developed
- Origins: Cuneiform began in the late 4th millennium BCE (the Uruk period) as simple pictographs used for accounting and administration (lists of goods, personnel, rations). Early signs were little drawings scratched or pressed into clay.
- Stylization and the stylus: Scribes used a triangular reed stylus. Pressing the stylus into wet clay produced wedge‑shaped impressions rather than strokes, and the pictorial signs gradually became collections of wedges.
- From pictures to signs: Over centuries the pictographs became increasingly abstract and conventionalized. Signs acquired phonetic (syllabic) values in addition to logographic (word) values; determinatives and phonetic complements were used to guide reading.
- Standardization and spread: Sumerian cuneiform was standardized in scribal schools and then adapted to write Akkadian and several other languages (Hurrian, Hittite, Elamite, etc.). By the 2nd millennium BCE it was a mature logo‑syllabic script composed of wedge clusters rather than pictures.

Identification of the pictured sign
The drawing you describe — an animal head with horns (a bull/ox head) followed by a small cluster of wedge impressions — is the Sumerian logogram GUD, meaning “ox” / “bull” / “cattle.” In Sumerian it is read gud; in Akkadian texts the same sign is often used logographically for the word alpu (“ox”). The pictorial ox head was later written as a specific cluster of wedges (the stylized cuneiform sign) rather than a detailed drawing.