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	Cuneiform was the writing system in ancient Mesopotamia.  The writing was three-dimensional marks created by pushing a stylus into wet clay before it hardened.  Strokes used in cuneiform are thicker at the top and thinner at the bottom of the symbol.  Pictograms were the basis of cuneiform writing, but in time cuneiform became abstract representations of the pictograms. (See Figure 1)        Cuneiform differs from our own alphabet, although both are abstract representations.  Our own alphabet is only a representation of sounds.  The cuneiform alphabet, however,  is divided into four functions;   1) A phonogram represents a speech-sound combination.   2) A logogram or ideogram represents an entire word or concept.   3) A phonetic complement selects the choice of logogram and indicates grammatical form.   4) A determinative determines whether or not the word represents a man or deity and is not pronounced         The ability to translate cuneiform was lost until 1835, when Henry Rawlinson, an English army officer, found inscriptions on a cliff in Persia.  Carved in the reign of King Darius of  Persia, they consisted of  identical texts in three languages: Old  Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. After translating the Persian, Rawlinson began to  decipher the others.  This story of course brings to mind the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the methods used to translate Ancient Egyptian's hieroglyphics.         Only the elite in Mesopotamia were literate and could read and write in cuneiform.  Generally, the priests had this knowledge.  Priests ruled Mesopotamia at that time.  Information was normally passed word-of-mouth and only the information the priests thought important was written in clay slabs.  "The recording of literature, science, society and history is a lasting legacy of the Sumerians. Tens of thousands of cuneiform texts have given us Sumerian lullabies, poetry, ledgers, codes of law, administration, property records, and lists of astronomical occurrences, animals and medicinal plants."        I think the Ancient Sumerian change from the pictogram to cuneiform reflects the way we write today.  They, too, looked for a simpler way to express their written thoughts, hence the simpler cuneiform alphabet.  We could spend our time writing with a pen on paper, but the ease of using our computers and word processors can outweigh the beauty of the handwritten text.  When we write on a daily basis, it is utility versus beauty.  I don't believe our journey ends there.  As humans we always will strive for quicker and easier means to do just about anything.
	Websites used as reference:  http://www.eliki.com/ancient/civilizations/sumerian/content.htm  http://saturn.sron.ruu.nl/~jheise/akkadian/cuneiform.html  http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html  http://comp.uark.edu/~gljohns/page4.html