Cuneiform Sign List

Unicode encodes Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform as 1,234 characters in three blocks: Cuneiform (U+12000 to U+123FF, 922 signs), Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation (U+12400 to U+1247F, 116 characters) and Early Dynastic Cuneiform (U+12480 to U+1254F, 196 signs). The main Cuneiform Symbols page keeps the 356 that people actually look for: the famous word signs, the syllable chart, every number and fraction, a handful of archaic signs and the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets. This page is the rest, 959 signs in all: 771 from the main block and the 188 Early Dynastic signs the main page does not show. Every one is a real character with its own page, so tapping it copies it and opens that page.

The order is the one specialists use when they look a sign up by name: alphabetical by its Unicode name, which is the sign's conventional reading in capitals with a subscript number where several signs share a reading (AB, AB₂; KAD₂, KAD₃, KAD₄, KAD₅). Unicode writes š as SH and ḫ as H because character names are plain ASCII; this page shows Š and Ḫ, puts Š after S as an Assyriological index does, and gives the seven big container families their own groups: KA×, GA₂×, LAGAB×, LU₂×, URU×, EZEN× and DAG.KISIM₅×. The 42 signs Unicode added in 2014 (U+1236F to U+12398) sit at the end of the block in the chart; here they are slotted in by name, so 𒍯 KAP stands with the other K signs and 𒍼 GIG with the G signs.

What you will find is the long tail of a script used for 3,000 years. Many of these signs were never common: compounds the lexical lists of the scribal schools catalogued (lists of professions, vessels, trees, birds and body parts that pupils copied for practice), variant shapes of one period or one city, and signs attested in a single text. A name is one reading, not a meaning: 'Cuneiform Sign A Times A' tells you the shape, 𒀁, water with water inside, and nothing about what a scribe meant by it. Where a reading and meaning are well established the group notes give them; where they are not, the notes say what the parts are and leave it there.

How to read a sign name: ×, +, gunû, šeššig, tenû and the numbers

Most names on this page describe how a compound is built. X×Y ('X times Y') means Y is written inside X: 𒅥 KA×GAR is the mouth sign with the bread sign inside, read gu₇ 'to eat'; 𒅘 KA×A, mouth with water, is nag 'to drink'; 𒇿 LU₂×BAD, a man with 'to die' inside, is ad₆ 'corpse'; 𒇥 LAGAB×U, a block with a hole, is pu₂ 'well'. X+Y is a ligature, two signs joined side by side, as in 𒀔 AB×U+U+U. X over X stacks a sign on itself (𒀮 AN over AN, 𒈭 MU over MU, 𒈘 LUGAL over LUGAL), X crossing X crosses two copies (𒆙 KAL crossing KAL, 𒄒 GIŠ crossing GIŠ), X opposing X sets them face to face (𒈙 LUGAL opposing LUGAL, 𒆴 KUR opposing KUR, 𒊎 PIRIG opposing PIRIG) and X squared arranges four copies in a square (𒂝 EN squared, 𒅒 IM squared, 𒀱 AN+NAGA squared). A full stop in a name on this page simply means one sign after another.

The modifiers are Akkadian words the ancient sign lists themselves used. Gunû ('decorated') adds extra hatching strokes to a sign: 𒅊 IGI gunû is the eye sign hatched, 𒊨 SAG gunû the head, 𒋯 TA gunû, 𒁼 DU gunû. Šeššig cross-hatches it: 𒁽 DU šeššig, 𒈕 LU₂ šeššig, 𒈚 LUGAL šeššig, 𒌪 UR šeššig. Tenû ('turned') slants it: 𒃸 GAN₂ tenû, 𒄕 GIŠ tenû, 𒄪 ḪA tenû, 𒈑 LU₂ tenû, 𒉩 NUN tenû, 𒍞 ZA tenû; 𒀹 AŠ zida tenû leans to the right (zida) and 𒀺 AŠ kaba tenû to the left (kaba). Nutillû ('unfinished') leaves part of the sign off: 𒉅 NAM nutillû, 𒊔 SAG nutillû. Then come the turns: 𒉁 NAGA inverted, 𒋘 ŠU over inverted ŠU, 𒌐 U over U with two reversed U, 𒎓 NU₁₁ rotated ninety degrees, and the star-shaped 𒋬 TA asterisk and 𒎔 PEŠ₂ asterisk.

The numbers are the Assyriologists' index of homophones. Dozens of signs can be read with the same syllable, so each gets a number in a fixed order: 𒆐 KAD₂, 𒆑 KAD₃, 𒆒 KAD₄, 𒆓 KAD₅ are four different signs all read kad; 𒆭 KU₄ 'to enter' and 𒆯 KU₇ 'sweet' share the sound ku with the common 𒆪 ku; 𒍫 ZU₅, 𒉢 NU₁₁, 𒋪 SUR₉ and 𒍻 GE₂₂ show how far the series run. Unicode writes the number as a plain digit (KAD3); the sign pages here use the subscript. A few signs are named otherwise: 𒀪 ALEPH is the sign Akkadian scribes used from the Old Babylonian period for the glottal stop ʾ, 𒆶 KWU318 carries its number in Nikolaus Schneider's 1935 list of Ur III signs, 𒍯 KAP is marked Elamite because it occurs only in Elamite texts, and the Early Dynastic signs with no reading at all are named LAK plus a number, explained below.

Where the sign list comes from: Deimel, Labat, Borger and the Unicode encoding

Modern cuneiform sign lists order signs by shape, usually by the first wedge, and number them: Anton Deimel's Šumerisches Lexikon from the 1920s, René Labat's Manuel d'épigraphie akkadienne (1948, still the student's handbook, with its tables of how each sign looked in each period) and Rykle Borger's Assyrisch-babylonische Zeichenliste (1978) and Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon (2003), whose MZL numbers are the ones cited in print today. Unicode did not take over any of these numberings; it gave each sign a name and listed the names alphabetically, which is why this page runs A to Z rather than from the single horizontal wedge to the most complicated sign, and why a specialist uses Oracc's online sign list to go from an MZL or Labat number to the character.

The encoding was prepared by the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding, and the proposal by Michael Everson, Karljürgen Feuerherm and Steve Tinney was accepted into Unicode 5.0 in 2006: 879 signs in the Cuneiform block, with reference glyphs drawn in the Ur III style of about 2100 BC rather than the simplified Neo-Assyrian shapes of most textbooks, plus the numbers block. Unicode 7.0 (2014) added 42 signs at U+1236F to U+12398, filling gaps found once editors started encoding real texts, and Unicode 8.0 (2015) added the sign 𒎙 for twenty and the whole Early Dynastic block.

The Early Dynastic signs are a different world. They come from the oldest readable lexical lists, written about 2600 to 2500 BC at Fara, the ancient Šuruppak, whose tablets the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft dug in 1902 and 1903, and at Abu Salabikh, excavated from 1963. Deimel catalogued the Fara signs in his Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen of 1922, and where a sign has no later equivalent and no agreed reading, Unicode simply uses his number as its name: 𒓕 LAK-003, 𒓖 LAK-021, 𒔁 LAK-617 and its eleven compounds, 𒔍 LAK-648 and its ten. The pots are the most telling: 𒒓 DUG×GA, 𒒧 DUG׊E and 𒒚 DUG×KASKAL draw the jar with its contents inside, the picture-writing stage that the later abstract 𒂁 dug had already left behind.

Fonts, typing and pitfalls with the rare cuneiform signs

Most of these signs show as boxes on a phone. Google's free Noto Sans Cuneiform covers all three blocks, including the 2014 and 2015 additions, and is the font to install on a Mac, iPhone, Android or Linux machine, none of which ship cuneiform by default. Windows 10 and 11 draw the Cuneiform and numbers blocks with the built-in Segoe UI Historic, but check the Early Dynastic signs there before relying on them. Assyriologists also use period fonts: Steve Tinney's CuneiformComposite and Sylvie Vanséveren's Assurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian), Santakku (Old Babylonian) and Ullikummi (Hittite), which draw the same characters in the shapes of one period.

There is no cuneiform keyboard, so copy from this page. In Word on Windows type the hex code and press Alt+X: 12165 Alt+X gives 𒅥, 124D5 gives 𒓕; on a Mac the Unicode Hex Input keyboard takes the same code, on Linux Ctrl+Shift+U. For a whole text, Oracc's Cuneify tool turns a transliteration such as lugal-e e2 mu-du3 into signs, and the Oracc Global Sign List gives each name its code point, readings and the MZL and Labat numbers. On this site every sign's page is found by its Unicode name: search 'cuneiform sign lugal opposing lugal' or 'cuneiform sign lak-617'.

Three pitfalls. First, a rare sign is not a better sign: to spell a name or a word, use the syllable chart on the main page, because 𒅥 in a tattoo means 'to eat' to anyone who can read it, and a LAK sign means nothing to anyone. Second, periods do not mix: an Early Dynastic pot sign next to a first-millennium sign in one line is 1,500 years of anachronism, visible at a glance to a specialist. Third, fonts disagree about rare shapes more than about common ones, so two signs this page shows as different may look alike in one font and a sign may be drawn from a different period's form in another; when it matters, quote the Unicode name or code point beside the character.