“The first system of writing, devised by the Sumerians, consisted of stylized representations of objects, known as pictograms.
The symbols, crude at first, were used primarily to record agricultural transactions and astronomical observations. Consequently, the first written words of which there is evidence were for nouns—particularly for stars and animals. Over the next hundred years Sumerian scribes combined noun pictograms with qualifying adjectives to arrive at symbols for such words as “small bison,” “big reindeer,” and “bright star.” Clearly enamored of their new invention, scholars continued to modify their writing system, and by about 3200 B.C. it contained symbols for verbs; “to sleep” for example, was represented by a recumbent man. These richer characters are called ideograms.
Greater refinement was needed, however, because the range of human communications by this time already encompassed abstract ideas.
These entered the Sumerian writing system about 3100 B.C. through the straightforward use of homonyms. For instance, to use and English example, a scribe might combine the noun symbols for “bee” and “leaf” to arrive at the abstract concept of ‘belief.’ But this enrichment of writing made for slower execution, and adherence to the use of pictures limited the number of ideas that could be expressed. These disadvantages the Sumerians overcame by simplifying their written symbols and teaching combined characters to the next generation as single words in their own right, known as phonograms.
A further attempt to facilitate the speed of writing, and to streamline it, eventually gave rise to the use of abstract symbols, each of which represented a unit of sound within a word, or syllable. This writing, known as cuneiform . . . was drawn by the scribe with a wedge-shaped stylus on a wet clay tablet. . . .
By the end of the third millennium B.C. the Sumerian writing system had become sufficiently rich and flexible to record the most complex historical events and literary creations. Inscribed on tablets in twelve columns, these literary compositions range from short hymns and longer myths to children’s fables and scholarly essays to epic-length poems, some running a thousand lines.”
—Charles Panati, The Browser’s Book of Beginnings, 1984.