In Mesopotamia, the Sumerians' pictographs (even earlier than the Egyptians') evolved into symbols that represented words, syllables, and eventually even phonetic sounds. Cuneiform, the Mesopotamian way of writing — with the sharpened end of a reed in wet mud — spread all over the Middle East.

Also like Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform writing opened up new vistas of early history in the nineteenth century A.D., when European scholars figured out how to read cuneiform documents such as royal edicts and business letters. Sumerians wrote love songs that, with the right track, could find a place on today's pop charts.

Cuneiform writings include early codes of laws. Babylonian king Hammurabi in the eighteenth century BC enacted one of the best known. A sample: "If the robber is not caught, the man who has been robbed shall make claim . . . and the town and its governor — shall give back to him everything he has lost."