The Early Forms of Cuneiform Writing

Cuneiform was not suddenly a uniform style of writing it emerged and developed over time. The inscriptions made on the wet clay were made with a stylus normally made from a reed stem or a wooden twig which would have been pressed into the clay producing a wedge shape. Cuneiform was versatile enough to be adopted by different societies so the symbol for a fish could be the word for a fish in different languages. It must have been a revelation to their societies when they first encountered it.