Cuneiform was developed by the Mesopotamian city-state, most likely because they needed a method of recording information. The earliest written records are tablets that list commodities by pictographic drawings of objects accopmanied by numerals and personal names inscribed in orderly columns. The Mesopotamian precursor to cuneiform was a writing system was structured on grid with horizontal and vertical divisions. Circa 2800 BCE, scribes rotated the pictographs and began writing in horizontal rows, from left to right and top to bottom. They began to abstract the characters and pictographs became less literal. Eventually, the writing developed into a series of wedge-shaped strokes known as cuneiform. Citations Meggs, P. B., & Purvis, A. W. (2016). Meggs' history of graphic Design, 6th edition. In _[[Meggs' History of Graphic Design]]_ (6th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ---- Created: February 22, 2021 Last Modified: February 22, 2021