The decoding of cuneiform

In the middle of 19th century Grotefend decoded the Persian cuneiform partially however his work didn't become famous all over the world. Grotefend analysed the structure of the messages of kings and found the blocks of signs that probably corresponded to the names of kings and their titles. Everything he had to do was to compare these signs with the chronology of Persian kings.

Later Rollingson decoded the Persian cuneiform finally copying the Behitunsk inscription. As the inscription was made in three languages cuneiforms of other nations were also decoded. All of them resulted to be the "offspring" of Sumerian cuneiform. Thanks to found big archives with documents and even with dictionaries in Babylon and Ninevia, the late forms of cuneiform were decoded by the end of 19th century.

The majority of cuneiform forms were the further development of the Akkadian cuneiform that is why they were read without any difficulties. And the languages that were hiding behind these cuneiforms were also found thanks to the great number of adjectives and logograms. Some late forms of cuneiform reminded the Akkadian one only by their outer look being the original forms of written language.

By the 21st century there are several decoded ancient analogues of the Sumerian cuneiform. Maybe these written language forms are not even connected with the Sumerian written language and cuneiform.