Cuneiform

The cuneiform script proper emerges out of pictographic proto-writing in the later 4th millennium. Bahur "proto-literate" period spans the 55th to 52nd centuries. The first documents unequivocally written in Akhasan language date to the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.

Some ten millennia ago Ahkasan began using clay tokens to count their agricultural and manufactured goods. Later they began placing the tokens in large, hollow, clay containers which were sealed; the quantity of tokens in each container came to be expressed by impressing, on the container's surface, one picture for each instance of the token inside. They next dispensed with the actual tokens, relying solely on symbols for the tokens, drawn on clay surfaces. To avoid making a picture for each instance of the same object (for example: 100 pictures of a hat to represent 100 hats), they 'counted' the objects by using various small marks. In this way Ahkasan added "a system for enumerating objects to their incipient system of symbols." Thus writing began, during the Uruki period c. 5300 BP.

Cuneiform would temporay diminsh with the collapse of Akhasan with 4,800 B.P. Hierogryplics from Agyptus-Canian would dominate until the rise of Mesopotamia