When presented with a meeting-free Friday afternoon we did what any normal person who has access to Irving Finkel would do, we asked him to teach us cuneiform. We're not really sure Nick learned anything, but hopefully you will. If you want to learn cuneiform from the man himself, Irving has written a book to help you with just that. In this video, Irving Finkel, curator in the Department of the Middle East, teaches us how to write cuneiform.

Originating in what is now Iraq before 3,200 BC, cuneiform script is, as far as we know, the oldest form of writing in the world. First developed by scribes as a bookkeeping tool to keep track of bread and beer rations in ancient cities like Uruk (in the south east of modern-day Iraq), the system soon spread across the Middle East and was used continuously for more than 3,000 years, up until the first century AD.

Cuneiform is not a language but a proper way of writing distinct from the alphabet. It doesn't have 'letters' – instead it uses between 600 and 1,000 characters impressed on clay to spell words by dividing them up into syllables, like 'ca-at' for cat, or 'mu-zi-um' for museum. Other signs stood for whole words, like our '£' standing for pound sterling.

The two main languages written in cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian, although more than a dozen others are recorded, including Hittite, cousin to Latin. Texts were written by pressing a cut, straight reed into slightly moist clay. The characteristic wedge-shaped strokes that make up the signs give the writing its modern name – cuneiform means 'wedge-shaped' (from the Latin cuneus for 'wedge').

Cast: Irving Finkel (Curator)