Cuneiform Sign Aleph

It marks aleph, the glottal stop, in cuneiform spelling.

Sign lists give it values that pair this brief catch in the throat with a vowel, so it can spell a syllable as well as the consonant. In a tablet, the language and neighboring signs decide whether it is read for its sound or as part of a conventional word-sign; one isolated sign does not yield a reliable translation.

How did this sign get its job?

Its later role was to spell aleph in cuneiform texts.

A separate sign for aleph inside a word, rather than at its start, is placed in the Middle Babylonian period. That was a later spelling specialization, not the origin of cuneiform.

Duplicate manuscripts show the regional choice: Boğazköy writes AḪ where the Mittani-period version writes ALEPH for the same aleph function. Hittite texts could also use a sign from the H-series, signs associated with h sounds, for that role. These spellings record scribal convention, not a fixed key for one sound.

Ugaritic was a neighboring ancient language whose alphabet was written with wedge-shaped signs. In the second-millennium BCE, it used three letters for aleph, distinguished by the vowel that followed. Those letters belong to that alphabet, not to this sign.