Miguel Civil, a scholar and researcher at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, was a leading expert on the Sumerian language, the earliest known written language. “No one has known Sumerian ...

1. The Sumerian Account of the Invention of Writing -- 2. Time and Place of the Invention -- 3. Received Ideas: The Pictographic Origins of Cuneiform Writing -- 4. Received Ideas: The Origin of ...

This particular development produced what scholars call cuneiform, taken from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge." At first, writing was used as a practical tool primarily for administration, accounting ...

Gonzalo Rubio spends his days reading dead languages that haven't been spoken for thousands of years. An assyriologist at Pennsylvania State University, Rubio studies the world's very first written ...