Discover Cuneiform
Resources for exploring the world's oldest writing system.
What is Cuneiform?
Cuneiform (from Latin cuneus, "wedge") is humanity's oldest writing system, developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. Writers pressed a reed stylus into soft clay to create wedge-shaped marks.
Originally pictographic, it evolved into a logo-syllabic system where signs could represent words or syllable sounds. This made it flexible enough to write Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and other languages for over 3,000 years.
Every cuneiform sign is built from these four wedge types.
Digital Libraries
Online databases containing cuneiform texts with translations, images, and scholarly annotations.
CDLI (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative)
500,000+ tabletsThe largest online collection of cuneiform texts, with images and metadata for hundreds of thousands of tablets.
ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus)
Annotated editionsScholarly editions of cuneiform texts with translations, linked to sign lists and dictionaries.
ETCSL (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature)
Sumerian literatureTranslations and transliterations of Sumerian literary texts from Oxford University.
SEAL (Sources of Early Akkadian Literature)
Akkadian literatureDatabase of early Akkadian literary texts with editions and analysis.
ePSD (Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary)
Sumerian dictionarySearchable dictionary for Sumerian signs, words, and meanings.
Library of Congress - Cuneiform Tablets
Primary sourcesDigitised tablets from the Library of Congress collection.
CDLI Arabic Initiative
Arabic interfaceArabic-language interface for CDLI, making cuneiform scholarship accessible in the primary language of modern Iraq.
Syrian Digital Library of Cuneiform
Syrian collectionsTrilingual project (Arabic, English, French) digitising cuneiform tablets from Syrian museums.
electronic Babylonian Library (eBL)
Research platformResearch platform hosting cuneiform text editions, fragment matching tools, and digitised tablets from the Iraq Museum.
Akkademia
AI translationOpen source AI model for translating Akkadian cuneiform, trained on ORACC data.
Scholars from the Region
Iraqi and regional scholars have made foundational contributions to cuneiform studies.
Taha Baqir (1912–1984)
IraqProduced the first Arabic translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh directly from Akkadian. Discovered the Laws of Eshnunna, a legal code predating Hammurabi by two centuries.
Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910)
Iraq (Mosul)Discovered the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh, the lion-hunt relief of Ashurbanipal, and the Balawat Gates. His book is freely available online.
Zainab Bahrani
IraqProfessor at Columbia University whose scholarship challenges how the field frames its own history. Her book War Essays is free to read online.
Lamia Al-Gailani Werr (1938–2019)
IraqFirst Iraqi woman to study archaeology abroad. Specialist in cylinder seals who founded the Basrah Museum and worked to recover artefacts looted from the Iraq Museum.
Learning Resources
Introductory materials for beginners.
Workbook of Cuneiform Signs
Daniel C. Snell
Free on Archive.org. Teaches the 110 most common cuneiform signs with exercises
Cuneiform
Irving Finkel & Jonathan Taylor
Introduction to the writing system from British Museum experts
Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon (MZL)
Rykle Borger
The standard scholarly reference for cuneiform sign numbering, used worldwide (2nd ed. 2010)
How to Write Cuneiform
British Museum
Learn the basics with clay and stylus
Museums
See cuneiform tablets in person at these collections.
British Museum - Mesopotamia Collection
London, UKHome to the Gilgamesh flood tablet, Cyrus Cylinder, and thousands of cuneiform objects.
Louvre - Near Eastern Antiquities
Paris, FranceHouses the Code of Hammurabi stele and extensive Mesopotamian collections.
Penn Museum - Babylonian Section
Philadelphia, USAArtifacts from the University of Pennsylvania's excavations at Ur and Nippur.
Iraq Museum
Baghdad, IraqThe world's largest collection of Mesopotamian artifacts, in the heartland of ancient Sumer and Babylon.