What is Cuneiform?
Cuneiform is the world’s first writing system. It was invented in southern Iraq in the mid fourth millennium BC, and was used by a whole range of peoples – from the earliest Sumerian accountants who came up with the world’s first spreadsheets, to Babylonian astronomers who recorded the movements of stars and planets in the first century AD. That is a time span of three and a half thousand years, far longer than the time our own alphabet has been in use, and means that half of written history is written in cuneiform.
Cuneiform is Latin for ‘wedge-shaped’, and describes how the signs look. The script was inscribed into clay tablets which do not decay in the ground, and half a million sources have so far been discovered. Pressing a stylus into the clay creates a beautiful 3D wedge, and all the signs are made up of different combinations of these wedges.
See here for a demonstration video.
As a writing system, cuneiform records many different languages, just as the Roman alphabet is used to write languages as diverse as English, Hungarian, and Vietnamese. The two core cuneiform languages are Sumerian and Akkadian, though cuneiform was also adapted to write other languages far to the east and west, from Elamite in Iran to Hittite in Turkey.
The script changed over the millennia, meaning that there are several different types. Beginners usually start with Neo-Assyrian signs as these are the simplest.
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You can download my starter set of Neo-Assyrian cuneiform signs here as a pdf or as a set of flashcards (these sets are made to be used in Anki - a tutorial on how to download and use it is available here).
Proto-Cuneiform tablet with seal impressions: administrative account of barley distribution with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars. MET: 1988.433.1.
Cuneiform tablet: list of magical stones (Achaemenid or Seleucid) MET: 86.11.64.
What is Akkadian?
Akkadian is the key to the history of the ancient Middle East – the language of diplomacy, business, education, religion, literature, and scholarship in Mesopotamia, which is now mostly modern-day Iraq. The Akkadian language was used for two and a half thousand years and encompasses both the Assyrian and Babylonian dialects. Since cuneiform was deciphered in the 19th century, we can now access thousands of poems, ritual texts, letters, administrative documents, and so much more, telling us about the society, culture and everyday lives of the Assyrians and Babylonians.
Ashurbanipal hunting with stylus in his belt.
How can I learn Akkadian?
If you are looking for a degree program that offers this option, consider applying to the University of Leicester to study with me.
I teach beginners’ Akkadian classes available to all undergraduate students enrolled on Archaeology and/or Ancient History degrees within the School of Heritage and Culture. Over one semester in the third year I teach the fundamentals of Old Babylonian grammar and the cuneiform writing system, enabling you to read some of the oldest texts in the world - in the original!
To find out more about the courses available at the University of Leicester:
https://le.ac.uk/archaeology. Akkadian is AH 3084 ‘Babylonian Sources’.
To find out more about Akkadian and Assyriology courses offered by other UK and international universities, please go to: https://iaassyriology.com/other-addresses/
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A guide to self-studying Akkadian
You don’t need to become an Assyriologist to begin studying Akkadian. Whether you are planning to apply for a course or are simply curious, there are many excellent resources available —below, I share a selection of my favourites along with some tips to help you get started.
Textbooks
There are two textbooks available that are friendly to self-studying learners. Martin Worthington’s Teach Yourself Babylonian, and John Huehnergard’s A Grammar of Akkadian. Both have plenty of exercises and come with answer keys so that you can check your own knowledge. Worthington sets out grammar topics all together in one place which makes it easy to look things up, while Huehnergard interleaves them over the pace of a year’s study, which is good for variety.
Dictionary
An online dictionary is available free here:
https://www.ebl.lmu.de/dictionary
The print version is very useful to flick through when you are looking for something (it’s in English despite the title):
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The most recent addition is A Student's Vocabulary of Akkadian in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions by Tyler Edward Kelley and Raleigh C. Heth. This is not a dictionary, but it will help you prioritise new words to learn so that you can quickly read the official writings of the Assyrian kings. For example, after learning all the words in chapters 1-3 1 you will know 45% of all the words in the corpus, which will speed up how fast you can read.
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Translating Akkadian
You don’t have to wait until you master Akkadian grammar in its entirety before you begin reading ancient texts – in my classes we start with real Akkadian sentences in week 3, and translating original texts really helps you get to grips with the grammar.
Beginners usually start with The Laws of Hammurabi, set out on a spectacular monument from Babylon and studied by Mesopotamian scribes for a thousand years after it was first written.
A great resource is
https://ehammurabi.org, which helps you see how to get from cuneiform to English translations, one law at a time.
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Bergmann (1953, p. 4, col. V, lns. 26–32).
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Borger Rylke. 2004 Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 305. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. p.31.
Tackling cuneiform
If you are used to alphabets, the cuneiform writing system might look somewhat terrifying. Rather than one sign representing one sound, each cuneiform sign can stand for many different sounds and concepts. But once initiated, you’ll see that this is part of the beauty of the script. In everyday contexts like letters or business documents it’s easy enough to know what they meant. At the other end of the spectrum,cuneiform allowed advanced scribes to play around with the different possibilities that the script offered. The multiple options of cuneiform signs were thought to be the key to the secrets of the universe, as everything was connected through language and puns.
But first things first: how to get started?
There is no need to remember all possible meanings of every sign you encounter. Even in Mesopotamia not everyone would have bothered to learn them all. Best to learn them as you go along, as they turn up in the texts that you read.
There are plenty of resources that help you choose the correct value for each sign. ​
The most accessible one is online here:
The print one I use is Borger, Rykle. 2004. Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 305. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.
A well-known classic is:
René Labat Manuel d'Épigraphie Akkadienne.: Sixieme Edition, Augmentee d'Addenda [French]
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Still, it is helpful to learn the most common signs and their values; otherwise, you will spend forever looking them up every single time. There is no one way of learning signs. I give my students flashcards and break down the sign list into manageable chunks – 10 signs per week is plenty.
You can make your own paper flashcards – by practising drawing the signs yourself, it helps your brain remember them. Another way is to create a digital deck of Flashcards.
I recommend that my students use the Anki app.
It is also helpful to download a cuneiform font:
https://www.hethport.uni-wuerzburg.de/cuneifont/
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To help you get started, I am sharing a list of signs in the Neo-Assyrian script, which will allow you to read the first eight laws of the Code of Hammurabi.
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Download sign list
Akkadian literature and more!
There is a huge amount of Akkadian available to read online.
The ‘electronic Babylonian Library’: https://www.ebl.lmu.de – is a fantastic and expanding online collection of Mesopotamian literature, where you can find the most up-to-date editions. When new fragments of clay tablets are found, they get added here.
You can start with the ‘Poem of Gilgamesh’, also known as the Epic of Gilgamesh. I began my journey into Assyriology after coming across this epic as a student – it is a fascinating read, especially in the original. It is also very common for students of Akkadian to focus on a portion of this epic in class; a good place to start is Tablet XI, which is usually encountered after they have gotten to grips with Hammurabi.
On eBL you will find a normalised version of the Akkadian text and commentary by Andrew George, which will help you tackle more tricky parts of the epic
Akkadian and Sumerian texts of all genres are increasingly digitised. You can explore more on ORACC, a huge collection of projects that present different types of texts from astronomical diaries to the Ur regional archaeology project and on Livius, a user-friendly collection of historical texts.
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Publications on the Ancient Near East
If you are looking for further reading on the Ancient Near East, a guide is available in my book
Wisnom S. (2025). The Library of Ancient Wisdom. Mesopotamia and the Making of History.
'The Flood Tablet' - XI Tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. K.3375 British Museum.
Gilgamesh mastering a lion AO 19862 Musée du Louvre.
Listen to Akkadian
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As you read and translate Akkadian texts, you might wonder what they sounded like.
The sounds of Akkadian will be covered in any self-study guide you pick up, but if you want to hear Akkadian read out loud by a top academic, you can listen here
You can even watch a film entirely in Akkadian, The Poor Man of Nippur, with subtitles in 19 languages.​​​
Sumerian
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Sumerian is harder to learn on your own because there are aspects of the grammar that are still controversial, but there are still plenty of resources out there for those who want to have a go!
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Coming soon is Cambridge Introduction to Sumerian by
Martin Worthington and Mark K. Chetwood which was designed especially for independent learners.
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Other academic grammars are also available online. Daniel Foxvog’s Introduction to Sumerian Grammar is one of the more beginner-friendly.
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​The scholarly standard is Bram Jagersma’s A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian, which is also available for download. At a thousand pages long, it is not for the faint of heart, but if you want to know the details of how we understand Sumerian grammar, then this is the place to look.
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Konrad Volk's A Sumerian Chrestomathy contains 44 texts written in Sumerian and a helpful sign list at the back of the book. It is a great resource to get started on Sumerian texts.
Gudea's Royal Inscription
VS 1 23, VA 3129 (brick); D.O. Edzard, RIME 3/1, 141f. ('Gudea E3/1/1/7.44'), Volk K. 2012, A Sumerian Chrestomathy p.7.
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