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Why did cuneiform signs become less like pictures over time?

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Sumerian cuneiform tablet — cuneiform An account of barley distribution, probably from Uruk, Mesopotamia, c. 3100–2900 bce; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

Cuneiform signs evolved away from their original pictographic form primarily due to the practical requirements of the writing medium and the development of a more cursive style.

As the use of clay tablets became the standard for record-keeping, scribes found it difficult to draw curved lines in soft clay. Consequently, they began using the slanted edge of a stylus to press marks into the surface, which resulted in the characteristic wedge-shaped appearance of the script. Over the course of the 3rd millennium BCE, these pictographs became increasingly conventionalized and linear, eventually losing their original pictorial resemblance as the writing system became more cursive and efficient.1

Additionally, the orientation of the signs changed over time; while early records were written in columns running downward, the script eventually shifted to a fixed horizontal order running from left to right, which required the signs to be turned on their sides.1