| Linear Elamite | |
|---|---|
 Linear Elamite characters inventoried by 1912.[1] | |
| Script type | orlogosyllabic[b] |
Period | c. 2300–1850 BCE |
| Status | Extinct |
| Direction | Left-to-right,right-to-left script  |
| Languages | Elamite |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Proto-writing
|
Linear Elamite was awriting system used inElam during theBronze Age betweenc. 2300 and 1850 BCE, and known mainly from a few extant monumental inscriptions.[5] It was used contemporaneously withElamite cuneiform and records theElamite language.[5] The French archaeologistFrançois Desset [fr] and his colleagues have argued that it is the oldest known purelyphonographic writing system,[5] although others, such as the linguist Michael Mäder, have argued that it is partlylogographic.[2][3]
There have been multiple attempts to decipher the script, aided by the discovery of a limited number ofmultilingual and bigraphic inscriptions. Early efforts byCarl Frank [de] (1912) and Ferdinand Bork (1905, 1924) made limited progress.[6] Later work byWalther Hinz [de] andPiero Meriggi [it;de] furthered the work.[7][8] Starting in 2018, Desset outlined some of his proposed decipherments of the script accomplished with a team of other scholars.[4][9][10] Their proposed near-complete decipherment was published in 2022,[5] being received positively by some researchers[c] while others[d] remain sceptical until detailed translations of texts have been published.[11][3]
It is often argued that Linear Elamite is derived from the olderProto-Elamite writing system.[e] The earliest evidence for the use of Linear Elamite script inSusa has been traditionally associated with the rule of kingPuzur-inshushinak. He came to power sometime around 2150 BCE.[12]
There is also evidence that the script was used even earlier, such as in 2300 BCE, but this has not been fully confirmed.[citation needed]
The use of Linear Elamite continued after 2100 BCE, and the death of King Puzur-Shushinak, last ruler of theAwan Dynasty in Susa. After his death, Susa was overrun by theThird dynasty of Ur, while Elam fell under control of theShimashki dynasty, also Elamite of origin.[13]
In 2018, substantial new Linear Elamite texts became available to scholars,[4] which created improved conditions for decipherment. These are the texts associated with theSukkalmah Dynasty (1900–1500 BCE).[citation needed]
As of 2021[update], there are now 51 known texts and fragments written in Linear Elamite.[15] They can be divided into three sub-corpora: the Western Elamite (Lowlands), the Central Elamite (Highlands), and the Eastern Elamite (Elamo-Bactrian).[15]
18 texts are on stone and clay objects, with a total of 533 signs excavated in the acropolis atSusa (now kept in theLouvre in Paris). These are now classified as belonging to the Western Elamite (Lowlands) group.[15] Other objects are held at theNational Museum of Iran.
The Central Elamite (Highlands) group consists of twenty-four inscriptions or fragments (with 1,133 signs in total) all on silver vessels.[15] In 2016, 10 additional Linear Elamite inscriptions were discovered (and published in 2018), some containing nearly 200 signs.[16] These are now classified as belonging to this group.
The Eastern Elamite group consists of eight short inscriptions, whose lengths range from two and eleven signs.[15]
According to an older classification, Elamite texts were identified by letters A-V.[f]
The most important longer texts, partlybilingual, appear in monumental contexts. They are engraved on large stone sculptures, including an alabaster statue of a goddess identified asNarundi (I), theTable au Lion (A), and large votive boulders (B, D), as well as on a series of steps (F, G, H, U) from a monumental stone stairway, where they possibly alternated with steps bearing texts withAkkadian titles of Puzur-Shushinak. One of the best sources of knowledge regarding the Elamite language is the bilingual monument called the "Table of the Lion" currently in the Louvre museum. The monument is written in bothAkkadian, which is a known language, and in Linear Elamite. A unique find is item Q, a silver vase found 1.5 kilometers northwest of Persepolis, with a single line of perfectly executed text, kept in the Tehran Museum.[17] There are also a few texts on baked-clay cones (J, K, L), a clay disk (M), and clay tablets (N, O, R). Some objects (A, I, C) include both Linear Elamite andAkkadian cuneiform inscriptions. The bilingual and bigraphic inscriptions of the monumental stairway as a whole, and the votive boulder B have inspired the first attempts at decipherment of Linear Elamite (Bork, 1905, 1924; Frank, 1912). Nine texts have also been found on silver beakers (X, Y, Z, F', H', I', J', K' and L').[4]
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![The Elamite name of Puzur‑Inshushinak: Pu-zu-r Su-ši-na-k in Linear Elamite script.[19]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aKutik-Inshushinak_(name)_in_Linear_Elamite.jpg)
A few of the short Linear Elamite inscriptions on someunprovenanced objects are suspected of being forgeries.[15][g] In particular, three brick tablets found at Jiroft are suspect.[20]
Efforts towards thedecipherment of Linear Elamite are long-standing. A very largeAchaemenid Elamite language vocabulary is known from the trilingualBehistun inscription and numerous other trilingual inscriptions of theAchaemenid Empire, in which Elamite was written usingElamite cuneiform (c. 400 BCE), which is fully deciphered. There is also a reasonably large corpus of the already deciphered Middle Elamite texts. By comparison not much is known about Old Elamite, the presumed language of Linear Elamite, and most texts are very short. This makes the decipherment of Linear Elamite more challenging. An important dictionary of the Elamite language, theElamisches Wörterbuch was published in 1987 by W. Hinz and H. Koch.[21][22] The Linear Elamite script however, one of the scripts used to write theElamite language (c. 2000 BCE), had remained largely elusive.[23]
The first readings were determined by the analysis of the bilingual cuneiform Akkadian-Linear ElamiteTable au Lion (Louvre Museum), byBork (1905) andFrank (1912). Two words with similar endings were identified in the beginning of the inscription in the knownAkkadian cuneiform (the words "Inshushinak"𒀭𒈹𒂞dinšušinak and "Puzur-Inshushinak"𒅤𒊭𒀭𒈹𒂞puzur4-dinšušinak), and correspondingly similar sets of signs with identical endings were found in the beginning of the Elamite part (.jpg)
and
), suggesting a match.[23] This permitted a fairly certain determination of about ten signs of Linear Elamite:[23]
Pu-zu-r shu-shi-na-k, KingPuzur-Inshushinak.[24]I-n-shu-shi-na-k, GodInshushinak.[24]Further efforts were made, but without significant success.[23]
Additional readings were proposed by CNRS associate researcher François Desset in 2018, based on his analysis of several silver beakers that were held in a private collection, and only came to light in 2004. Desset identified repetitive sign sequences in the beginning of the inscriptions, and guessed they were names of kings, in a manner somewhat similar toGrotefend's decipherment ofOld Persian cuneiform in 1802–1815.[25][26] Using the small set of letters identified in 1905–1912, the number of symbols in each sequence taken as syllables, and in one instance the repetition of a symbol, Desset was able to identify the only two contemporary historical rulers that matched these conditions: Shilhaha and Ebarat, the two earliest kings of theSukkalmah Dynasty.[4] Another set of signs matched the well-known God of the period:Napirisha. This permitted the determination of several additional signs:[4][27]
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Shi-l-ha-ha, Shilhaha, second king of theSukkalmah Dynasty.[4][27].jpg)
E-ba-r-ti, Ebarat II, founder of theSukkalmah Dynasty.[4][27]
Na-pi-r-ri-sha, GodNapirisha.[4][27]In 2020 Desset announced that he and an international team of researchers had completed a proposed decipherment of all known inscriptions in Linear Elamite, through deductive work based on the confrontation of known Elamite vocabulary and the recently determined additional letters, and through the analysis of the standard contents of known Elamite texts in cuneiform.[27][10] Their near-complete decipherment of the script was published in 2022.[5] (See below.)
New readings include:
In 2009, the archaeologist Jacob L. Dahl, who researches the decipherment of Proto-Elamite, argued that Linear Elamite was a limited-use writing system with few practitioners and that its signary lacked standardisation. He expressed doubts that the corpus of texts belonged to a single shared tradition of writing and suggested that many texts may be composed of pseudo-glyphs which do not encode any decipherable meaning, although some appeared to imitate older texts.[29]
In 2022,Desset et al. (2022) argued that Linear Elamite is analpha-syllabary, which would make it the oldest known purelyphonographic writing system.[5] However, they admit that somelogograms may have been used, although only rarely and not systematically, arguing that Elamite scribes rejected logographic writing in the 3rd millennium BCE.[30] Other researchers, such as the linguist Michael Mäder, dispute this, arguing that only around 70 percent of Linear Elamite characters are likely to be purely phonographic and that the remainder are logograms, as evidenced by mathematical analyses of Linear Elamite inscriptions.[3][31]
An early inventory of Linear Elamite byCarl Frank [de], published in 1912, listed 64 distinct signs, noting someallographic variations.[24] Since then, more recent discoveries have allowed more signs to be identified. In 2022, Desset and his colleagues published an updated inventory of 348 Linear Elamite glyphs,[32] corresponding to between 80 and 110graphemes, including 72 phonographic signs and theirallographic variants, 4 undeciphered infrequent signs, and 33hapax legomena.[33]
Some scholars have suggested that Linear Elamite is derived from the olderProto-Elamite script. Desset and colleagues argue that Linear Elamite is an evolution of the Proto-Elamite script, and that the Proto-Elamite script evolved, in parallel withSumerian cuneiform, from a common substrate of simple signs and numerals used withaccounting tokens andnumerical tablets.[27] Desset outlined some of their discoveries in public lectures,[27][28] before they were formally published in July 2022.[5] His colleagues in this research included Kambiz Tabibzadeh, Matthieu Kervran, Gian Pietro Basello, and Gianni Marchesi.[34][5]
However, the continuous evolution of Linear Elamite from Proto-Elamite is disputed by other researchers. Dahl argues that similarities with Linear Elamite are better explained by imitation of the most frequent Proto-Elamite signs from objects recovered at Susa by Elamite scribes familiar withOld Akkadian cuneiform who, faced with Mesopotamian cultural expansion, sought, in a process ofschismogenesis, to culturally differentiate themselves by borrowing from an ancient local writing system, namely Proto-Elamite, to provide the basis for anarchaicising new script. This, he argues, better explains the unusual content of some texts, such as "O" and "M", inconsistency in the form and execution of signs, and apparent resistance to trends of simplification that would otherwise be expected from scripts used in administrative settings, as was the case with Proto-Elamite.[35]
During a 2-year research program at ANRT (Atelier National de Recherche Typographique), Sina Fakour designed a computer font for Linear Elamite based on the analysis of inscriptions on various materials. The typeface, named Hatamti, includes about 300 glyphs that makes the digital transmission and reproduction of Linear Elamite possible. Additionally he investigated the role of the engraving tool and the material on the quality of the signs.[36] This project was undertaken as part of the Missing Scripts[37] program and in collaboration with François Desset.
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