Weld-Blundell Prism: The Sumerian King-List
(Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; number: AN1923.444)
What is written on it?
Cuneiform writing (from Face d)
Interpretation of the above cuneiform symbols
- The script is known as cuneiform, after the Latin word (cuneus) for a wedge.
- The Sumerian people developed this writing system, the oldest yet known, in about 3000BC.
- It is composed of wedge-like signs impressed in leather-hard clay.
- The writing records the names of the rulers of central and southern Iraq.
- These areas were known in ancient times as Akkad and Sumer (what was later to become "Babylonia").

