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The French archaeologist François Desset managed to decipher one of the last ancient languages that were still understood to us, the “Elamite“, Spoken in present-day Iran about 4 millennia ago
As published in its issue this month by the journal “Sciences et avenir”, Desset, who currently works at the University of Tehran, has spent 10 years trying to decipher the meaning of some writings found in 1901 on various ceramics and other objects.
It was a phonetic language that belonged to the kingdom of Elam and that due to its age is at the same level as Mesopotamian Protocuneiform and Egyptian Hieroglyph, the oldest known so far.
Its discovery took place in some ruins in the city of Susa and where, in 1901, archaeologists found a series of vessels with symbols that, however, no one had been able to decipher.
Desset, a professor also associated with the University of Lyon, an expert on the Bronze Age and the Iranian Neolithic, has succeeded after hard work.
The investigator he managed to identify a series of characters that were repeated and concluded that they were proper names. He associated them with the names of two Elemite rulers and the local goddess Napirisha, which allowed him to establish tables of correspondence with the words found.
“Thanks to these works, I can affirm that writing did not appear first in Mesopotamia exclusively, two writings appeared in two different regions at the same time”, Desset told “Sciences et avenir”.
The origin of writing, located until now in present-day Iraq, will have to coexist with this new discovery, which also places it in Iran.
“It is not a mother script and her daughter, as was believed until now, are two sister scriptures,” he said.
Unlike the Mesopotamian cuneiform, which is phonetic (signs that express sounds) and logogrammic (signs that express concepts), the “Elamite” is made from signs that express syllables, consonants and vowels, according to the archaeologist.
This language, used for 1,400 years, it was written from right to left and top to bottom.
Deciphering this language will also allow us to learn more about that culture. Starting, according to Desset, with his name, since Elan’s had been given to him by outer towns and they called themselves “Hatamti.” EFE
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