Breaking the Code, The Decipherment of Linear Elamite Writing
The announcement – very rare – must have delighted the souls of Father Barthelemy, Sylvester de Sacy, or even Champollion, French archaeologist Francois Desset, of the Archéorient Laboratory in Lyon, declared on November 27, 2020, that he had successfully deciphered 4,300 to 3,900-years-old inscriptions!
They are all written in Linear Elamite writing, a script used by the Elamites who inhabited then what has become Modern Iran. Scholars gathered online to learn about the discovery made from the Cultural department of the University of Padova (Italy), were excited. For more than a century, since its discovery in Susa in 1901, it has resisted any decipherment attempt as is also the case for Cretan Linear A or Indus Valley writings. Dr Desset, who has been active in the University of Tehran (Iran) since 2014, explained, that: ‘this writing was first discovered at the ancient site of Susa (Iran) in 1901, and for 120 years we had not been able to read what was written 4,300 to 3,900 years ago. I found the keyin 2017 and completed the decipherment in 2020, due to the quarantine in my flat in Tehran, with three other colleagues, Kambiz Tabibzadeh, Matthieu Kervran and Gian-Pietro Basello.
Contemporary writing systems
The oldest examples of writing currently known are from Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and date back to ca. 3300 BC: these are the Proto-Cuneiform tablets. The French archaeologist is writing since 2012 that the older version of Linear Elamite writing, called Proto-Elamite writing, is as old as the Proto-Cuneiform and should be dated around 3300-3000 BC: I can now say that the most ancient writing in the World was not first in Mesopotamia and then in Iran later: these two systems, the Mesopotamian Proto-cuneiform and the‘Iranian’ Proto-Elamite system, were in fact contemporaries! Proto-cuneiform is not the mother of Proto-Elamite, but these systems should be considered as sister.
Secondly, as it had been proposed by scholars like Gelb or Meriggi in the 1960’s and 1970’s, I think that the Iranian Proto-Elamite (ca. 3300-3000 BC) and Linear Elamite (2300-1850 BC) writings should not be considered as two independent writing systems, but as the same script which evolved between two different chronological stages.
This completely changes the perception of the appearance of the writing system in the Middle East because it is now more accurate to say that people living on the Iranian Plateau developed their own writing system “at the same time” as in Mesopotamia and that this area should no longer be ignored in the processes of historical reconstructions dealing with the origins of writing in the World …
This is the latest form of this Proto-Iranian writing (previously called Linear Elamite script) that has been deciphered. Presently, these are forty inscriptions found in southern Iran, in Susa, in Fars (Marv-Dasht vessel and Kam-Firouz area) and Kerman province with the archaeological sites of Jiroft/Konar Sandal and Shahdad. Unlike Mesopotamia’s cuneiform writing, which is a mixed writing system that combines logogrammatic (recording an object, idea, word) and phonetic (recording sound) signs, Linear Elamite writing is unique in the World in such a remote period. It is ‘pure’ phonetic system, an alpha-syllabary to be more precise, with signs recording only vowels, consonants and syllables.
Proto-Iranian writing was used from about 3300 to 1850 BC and has greatly changed between its earliest (Proto-Elamite tablets) and the most recent (Linear Elamite) texts. Of the 250/300 initial signs that recorded proper names in the Proto-Elamite tablets (the vast majority of them are currently preserved in the Louvre nowadays), only 80 to 100 will remain in the Linear Elamite stage thereafter. About a hundred signs have been in continuous use for about 1,400 years and are generally written from right to left and top to bottom. “To work, we divided The Forty Linear Elamite texts That we had it in 7 groups, by origins and periods because Linear Elamitewas used from 2300 to 1850 BC under the rule of different rulers and dynasties and in different regions. The archaeologist continues. Most of the texts are fairly frequent royal inscriptions, dedicated to ancient deities, such as : “I am [name of the ruler], the ‘king of this area (+ other titles)and the I created this object for [name of a god or a person]”.
For François Desset, a decoding “click” occurred in 2017 while analysing a set of 8 texts written on silver vases, the so-called gunagi vessels, dated between 2000-18500 BC. BC, probably coming from graves in Kam Firouz area, Fars (currently in a private collection in London). Since these vases presented very repetitive sequences of signs, already standardized, the archaeologist was able to identify the signs used to write the names of two kings, Eparti II and Shilhaha, who ruled around 1950 BC as well as the main god at that time, Napirisha.
A Linear Elamite inscription on the Marv Dasht vessel (Iran), dated to the late third millennium BC. © Francois Desset
This first step of the decipherment, published in 2018, culminated in 2020 with a full decoding, which will be scientifically published in 2021. Thus, for example, the translation of the wonderful silver vessel found in Marv Dasht area in the 1960’s and now preserved in The National Museum in Tehran (Iran), can be read in Elamite language as:
- za-na | ma-ra-p-š-ša-i-r | šu-m/wa-r a-s/šu | la-ni i-na | u ša-ri2-h | s/zi-a-n | hi2-š ma-ni ri-na | hu2-m-š-ša-t | ki-ri2 nu te-na ti-a-h
Here is the translation:
(1)(For) the lady of Marapša, Šumar-As/šu, (a) silver (vessel) I fashioned.
(In) the temple (siyan), to be named for me/for the fame of my name, (I) Humšat, (as) an offering/in gratitude (for) you, humbly/benevolently, I deposited.
This is the result of years of hard work. “I’ve been working on these writing systems since 2006. I didn’t wake up one morning to tell myself that I had deciphered Linear Elamite. It took me more than 10 years and I wasn’t sure I would get there. “
Linear Elamite writing notes a specific language, Elamite. It is a language isolate that cannot currently be associated with any other known language family, such as the Basque language. “Until this decipherment, everything related to the inhabitants occupying the Iranian plateau had come mainly from Mesopotamian texts and point of view. These new discoveries will finally allow us to access the special point of view of the men and women occupying an area that they defined themselves as Hatamti, while the term Elam, which we have known until then, actually corresponds only to “an external geographical concept, coined by their neighbours in Mesopotamia.”
This decryption breakthrough has important implications in three areas, François Desset continued:on Iranian history. On the development of writing in Iran in particular, and in the Middle East in general, with considerations regarding the continuity between Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite texts. And on the Elamite language itself, which I now propose to call Hatamtite, which is from now on better documented in its most ancient stage currently known and available for the first time through a writing system other than the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia.
According to Massimo Vidale, professor in Padova University and organizator of the Conference, of François Desset, “France, with this new decoding, is maintaining its priority in” cracking “lost old writing systems!. As for François Desset, he has already started to work on the decipherment of the Proto-Elamite tablets, the most ancients texts in the World (with Mesopotamian Proto-Cuneiform tablets), for which he considers to have now opened a “highway” with the decipherment of Linear Elamte
About deciphering ancient scriptures
We must not confuse language (spoken sounds) with writing (visual signs). Hence, the same writing system can be used for notation of different languages. For example, the Latin alphabet is currently used to record for example French, English, Italian, Turkish and even Persian (fingilish) languages. Likewise, the Mesopotamian cuneiform writing made it possible to recorddifferent languages such as Akkadian (a Semitic language), Old Persian (an Indo-European language) or even Elamite and Sumerian (linguistic isolates).
On the contrary, a language can also be recorded with different writing systems such as Farsi (an Indo-European language) which is currently also written with the Arabic alphabet in Iran, the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan and eve, with the Latin alphabet (fingilish). This is the same situation for Elamite language, known until now only through cuneiform writing. Through the decipherment of the Linear Elamite writing done by François Desset and his colleagues, we now have access to this language through a writing system that may have been developed specifically for it and thus would reflect the subtle phonemic details of this language better than cuneiform writing.
Some great “decoders”:
Father Barthelemy (1716-1795) decoded Palmyra’s alphabet in 1753, then the Phoenician alphabet in 1754.
Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832) deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-1895) was one of the four joint decipherers the cuneiform writing recording the Akkadian language.
“Linear B” was decoded by Michael Ventris (1922-1956) in 1952, one of the three writings discovered in Knossos (Crete) used in 2The tenth Millennium BC to note an ancient form of Greek.
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