What was the writing system of Mesopotamia called

In ancient Mesopotamia, also known as the Fertile Crescent, thewriting system they utilized was called cuneiform which came aboutin the late 4th millennium BC in Sumer. Cuneiform precededhieroglyphs, which was the writing system utilized by the ancientEgyptians. Cuneiform consisted of wedge shaped characters andpictorial representations impressed in slabs of clay with bluntedges of reeds. It is one of the earliest known writing systems,and the first known written language.