==History==
The cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century B.C.E. down to the 2nd century C.E.<ref>Adkins 2003, p. 47.</ref>
Ultimately, it was completely replaced by [[alphabetic writing]] (in the general sense) in the course of the [[Roman era]] and there are no Cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century [[Assyriology]]. Successful completion of its decipherment deciphering is dated to 1857.
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{{Main|Cuneiform (Unicode block)|Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation|l2=Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation (Unicode block)}}
[[Unicode]] (as of version 68.0) assigns to Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform script the following ranges::U+12000–U+123FF (879 922 assigned characters) "[[Cuneiform (Unicode block)|Cuneiform]]":U+12400–U+1247F (103 116 assigned characters) "[[Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation]]"
The final proposal for Unicode encoding of the script was submitted by two cuneiform scholars working with an experienced Unicode proposal writer in June 2004.<ref>http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1JTC1/sc2SC2/wg2WG2/docs/n2786.pdf</ref><ref>http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12207r-n4277r-cuneiform-add.pdf</ref>
The base character inventory is derived from the list of [[Ur III]] signs compiled by the [[Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative]] of [[UCLA]] based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003), and Robert Englund. Rather than opting for a direct ordering by glyph shape and complexity, according to the numbering of an existing catalog, the Unicode order of glyphs was based on the Latin alphabetic order of their "last" Sumerian transliteration as a practical approximation.