3000 BCE: Cuneiform (History) In Ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians developed the earliest standardized writing system: Cuneiform. Small marks were made with a pointed, wedge-shaped stylus on clay tablets, and were used to recorded business transactions. (Style) In its early forms, Cuneiform was written in columns from top to bottom. As many of the symbols were reoriented on their sides, the writing direction also turned to rows from left to right. Cuneiform symbols underwent even more changes in the next 500 years, including evolving from pictograms to ideograms. The development of ideograms allowed for fewer symbols that could be more easily memorized and practiced. The use of Cuneiform dwindled in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE as other language systems began to spread. …show more content…
Egyptian Hieroglyphics developed in the same century as Sumerian Cuneiform. They were used by scribes to record the Pharaoh’s possessions. (Style) As more complex ideas needed to be expressed, the Egyptian written language expanded as well. Over the next 3,000 years, Hieroglyphics grew into a combination of pictographs (of which there are over 750 individual symbols), ideograms, and phonograms. Hieroglyphics can be written any which way—right to left, left to right, or downwards—and are read in the direction that the images of people and animals face. For example, if a symbol is facing left, the text would be read from left to