A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 BCE and 1800 BCE in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings.
What’s more, it’s unclear whether all the artifacts used to decipher the writings were legally acquired.
Only about 40 known examples of Linear Elamite survive today, making the script challenging to decode, but researchers say they’ve largely accomplished just that, they wrote in a paper published in July in the Journal of Assyriology and Near Eastern Archaeology (https://www.academia.edu/82452838/The_Decipherment_of_Linear_Elamite_Writing).
Key to their decipherment was the analysis of eight inscriptions on silver beakers.
Other research teams had previously decoded different Linear Elamite inscriptions, and the new study’s authors built on this previous work by comparing the writing system in the eight Linear Elamite inscriptions with cuneiform (an already-deciphered script used in what is now the Middle East) texts that date to around the same time period and likely contain the names of the same rulers and their titles and use some of the same phrases to describe the rulers.
The team determined what many other additional signs meant, the team wrote. However, about 3.7 percent of the Linear Elamite signs remain undecipherable.
There are more than 300 Linear Elamite signs representing different sounds, such as a crescent-shaped sign that sounds like «pa», the team wrote in the paper.
The corresponding author for the team, François Desset, an archaeologist at the University of Tehran and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), declined to comment about the team’s work.
Experts aren’t exactly sure where the eight Linear Elamite inscriptions originated.
Seven are in the collection of a collector named Houshang Mahboubian, while the other is in the collection of Martin Schøyen, a Norwegian businessman and collector. The Schøyen collection has staff members that help oversee the collection and they regularly work with scholars.
The inscription owned by Schøyen and hundreds of other artifacts in Schøyen’s collection were impounded by the Norwegian police on 24 August 2021.
Courtesy of ScienceAlert.com
AR Issue #106
Ancient Wanderers
by William B. Stoecker
