maximus otter
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Today, only a handful of millennia-old scripts remain unreadable. Thanks to a team of European scholars led by French archaeologist Francois Desset, one of the last holdouts might finally be deciphered: Linear Elamite, an obscure system used in what is now Iran.
If the findings are correct—and the claim is hotly debated by the researchers’ peers—then they could shed welcome light on a little-known society that flourished between ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley at the dawn of civilization.
The paper uses newly examined inscriptions from a set of ancient silver beakers to propose a method for reading the symbols that make up Linear Elamite, potentially paving the way for understanding long-obscure texts.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/1d/db/1ddb3c28-6fc5-4f54-a525-a3dab995e66b/perforated_stone_louvre_museum_sb6_sb177_black_and_white.jpeg)
Perforated stone with Linear Elamite inscriptions, from the collections of the Louvre
French archaeologists digging in Susa at the turn of the 20th century uncovered evidence of a writing system that seemed nearly as old as cuneiform but used a different set of symbols. The system apparently fell out of use, as scribes in Susa—for reasons that remain unclear—instead turned to cuneiform to write their language. About 800 years later, another home-grown system took hold. Scholars dubbed the earlier system Proto-Elamite and the second, which was believed to have grown out of the first, Linear Elamite; both were presumed to record the Elamite language, about which little is known.
Over the past century, archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,600 Proto-Elamite inscriptions, but only about 43 in Linear Elamite, scattered widely across Iran. The latter was used sporadically and fell out of use with the collapse of urban areas across the Middle East around 1800 B.C.
Enter Desset, a French archaeologist at the University of Tehran. In 2015, he gained access to a private London collection of extraordinary silver vessels with a host of inscriptions in both cuneiform and Linear Elamite.
The vessels’ juxtaposition of scripts made it “the jackpot” for deciphering Linear Elamite, says Desset. Some proper names written in cuneiform could now be compared with symbols in Linear Elamite—including the names of known Elamite kings, such as Šilhaha. By tracking repeated symbols that were likely proper names, Desset was able to make sense of the script, which comes in an array of geometric shapes.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...phered-a-mysterious-ancient-script-180980497/
maximus otter
If the findings are correct—and the claim is hotly debated by the researchers’ peers—then they could shed welcome light on a little-known society that flourished between ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley at the dawn of civilization.
The paper uses newly examined inscriptions from a set of ancient silver beakers to propose a method for reading the symbols that make up Linear Elamite, potentially paving the way for understanding long-obscure texts.
Perforated stone with Linear Elamite inscriptions, from the collections of the Louvre
French archaeologists digging in Susa at the turn of the 20th century uncovered evidence of a writing system that seemed nearly as old as cuneiform but used a different set of symbols. The system apparently fell out of use, as scribes in Susa—for reasons that remain unclear—instead turned to cuneiform to write their language. About 800 years later, another home-grown system took hold. Scholars dubbed the earlier system Proto-Elamite and the second, which was believed to have grown out of the first, Linear Elamite; both were presumed to record the Elamite language, about which little is known.
Over the past century, archaeologists have uncovered more than 1,600 Proto-Elamite inscriptions, but only about 43 in Linear Elamite, scattered widely across Iran. The latter was used sporadically and fell out of use with the collapse of urban areas across the Middle East around 1800 B.C.
Enter Desset, a French archaeologist at the University of Tehran. In 2015, he gained access to a private London collection of extraordinary silver vessels with a host of inscriptions in both cuneiform and Linear Elamite.
The vessels’ juxtaposition of scripts made it “the jackpot” for deciphering Linear Elamite, says Desset. Some proper names written in cuneiform could now be compared with symbols in Linear Elamite—including the names of known Elamite kings, such as Šilhaha. By tracking repeated symbols that were likely proper names, Desset was able to make sense of the script, which comes in an array of geometric shapes.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...phered-a-mysterious-ancient-script-180980497/
maximus otter
