CUNEIFORM. This name was first applied by Engelbert Kampfer, at the beginning of the 18th century, to those rock inscriptions from Persia, and to inscriptions on brick and stone from Babylon, which are distinguished by the use of characters made up of triangles or wedge-shaped incisions. This kind of writing was still practised in Babylonia in the first century B.C. Copies accurate enough to allow of study, were used by Karsten Niebuhr in who distinguished three kinds of cuneiform writing, found in three columns in the inscriptions, and divined that one was alphabetic in character. It has since been proved that some of the consonants include the value of a short vowel.