[efskap]

In addition, Akkadian used cuneiform not only for phonemic writing, but also had many signs borrowed as-is from Sumerian as logograms (sumerograms), e.g. for the words for sheep and king. So in that sense it is indeed very similar to Japanese.

[jhbadger]

Egyptian did that too (and that writing system developed independently as far as we know) -- it's interesting that multiple ancient cultures did that (and as you mention modern Japanese isn't that different)