Cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing, emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC.

Archaic versions of cuneiform writing, including the Ur III (and earlier, ED III cuneiform of literature such as the Barton Cylinder) are not included due to extreme complexity of arranging them consistently and unequivocally by the shape of their signs;^[1] see Early Dynastic Cuneiform for the Unicode block.

The columns within the list contain:

1. MesZL: Sign index in Rykle Borger's (2004) Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon.
2. ŠL/HA: Sign index in Deimel's Šumerisches Lexikon (ŠL), completed and accommodated in Ellermeier and Studt's Handbuch Assur (HA).
3. aBZL: Sign index in Mittermayer's (2006) Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der sumerisch-literarischen Texte.
4. HethZL: Sign index in Rüster and Neu's (1989) Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon.
5. Sign name according to MesZL, HA etc.
6. Unicode code point. In the case of composite signs without a single dedicated code point, a sequence of the constituent signs' code points, joined by an ampersand ("&").
7. Corresponding Unicode character name(s) as per Unicode 5.0 cuneiform encoding standard, in some cases departing from those typically encountered in the literature.
8. Any further comments.

In MesZL, signs are sorted by their leftmost parts, beginning with horizontal strokes (single AŠ, then stacked TAB, EŠ₁₆), followed by the diagonals GE₂₃ and GE₂₂, the Winkelhaken U and finally the vertical DIŠ. The relevant shape for the classification of a sign is the Neo-Assyrian one (after ca. 1000 BC); the standardization of sign shapes of this late period allows systematic arrangement by shape. Note that the actual shape displayed by default by browsers as of 2024 is from a much earlier period during the heyday of Sumerian culture in the 3rd millennium BC.

At Sumerisches-Glossar.de the complete sign list as PDF with all cuneiform signs in their Neo-Assyrian shape and with an introduction by Rykle Borger is to be found.