Question

Which of the following civilisations developed the cuneiform writing system?
A. The Babylonian
B. The Assyrian
C. The Sumerian
D. The Akkadian

Answer 1

Hint: The Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians were all the great Mesopotamian civilisations which have used the cuneiform writing system at some point. The development of cuneiform itself went through multiple stages under these civilisations.

Complete answer: The cuneiform system of writing was a craft of using wedges on clay to depict the script. Initially, the script included pictographs to depict the real-life materially visible concepts and later developed phonograms for the concept of words and unseeable exchange that happens around. This form of writing was given up around 100 BCE and the alphabetical system of the script was adopted then.
There have been great literary works written in the cuneiform writing system like Atrahasis, The Descent of Inanna, The Myth of Etana, The Enuma Elish and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh which has only been known after mid 1$9^{th}$ century CE. All these works have now been translated into English and form a vast literary source of understanding the Mesopotamian history.

Now, let’s look at the option;
Option A- The cuneiform system of writing was first developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia between 3500 BCE to 3000 BCE.
Options B, C, D- The Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians were the civilisations which proliferated after the Sumerians. Even though they did make use of the script and also developed it in advanced forms, later on, it was the Sumerians who initially invented this writing style, to which many additions were made later.
Thus, the correct option is (C).

Note: Up until the discovery of the cuneiform of writing style in the mid 1$9^{th}$ century, the Bible was considered as the main source of history central to all advanced forms of writing. This had given it and by extension Europe, the singular and central authority in literature, which has been significantly altered since.