About Discover Cuneiform
A free educational tool for exploring cuneiform, the world's oldest writing system.
Why We Built This
This project started with curiosity. We wanted to understand cuneiform for ourselves, and quickly discovered how difficult it is to find accessible starting points. The more we learnt, the more we realised others might be curious too.
Only a few hundred people in the world can read cuneiform. Yet over half a million clay tablets have been excavated from the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, and the vast majority have not yet been fully studied, translated, or published.
We may not be archaeologists, Assyriologists, or museum curators. We came to this journey drawn in by the script itself and the extraordinary discoveries that surround it. Discover Cuneiform is our attempt to share that journey, a starting point for the curious, with genuine pathways to dive deeper. We believe this world should not belong only to specialists. The writing system that gave humanity its earliest recorded literature, its earliest codified laws, its earliest mathematics deserves a wider circle of attention.
What is Discover Cuneiform?
Discover Cuneiform is a free, non-commercial educational tool that makes cuneiform accessible to curious learners. Whether you want to explore famous ancient texts, learn to write as Mesopotamian scribes did, or compose your own inscriptions in cuneiform script, this is a place to begin.
This is not a scholarly research platform or a translation engine. It is designed to spark genuine engagement with an ancient writing system, and to connect you with the academic resources that go far deeper.
Features
Explore
Browse celebrated tablets, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Code of Hammurabi, with transliterations, translations, and historical context.
Learn
Study cuneiform through structured lessons. Begin as scribes did in the edubba, the ancient tablet house.
Create
Write your own text and see it rendered in cuneiform on a virtual clay tablet.
Discover
Dive deeper with a curated collection of digital libraries, books, active research projects and more.
Data Sources
- Sign data from ORACC Sign List (CC0 Public Domain)
- Tablet texts from CDLI (Non-commercial use)
- Research links to eBL (External reference)
See our Resources page for full attribution details.
Built With
Discover Cuneiform is built with SvelteKit and Tailwind CSS.