The Proto-Elamite period, also known as
Susa III
Susa ( ; Middle elx, 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, translit=Šušen; Middle and Neo- elx, 𒋢𒋢𒌦, translit=Šušun; Neo- Elamite and Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, translit=Šušán; Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼, translit=Šušá; fa, شوش ...
, is a
chronological
Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. ...
era
An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth.
Comp ...
in the
ancient history
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history cove ...
of the area of
Elam
Elam (; Linear Elamite: ''hatamti''; Cuneiform Elamite: ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ; he, עֵילָם ''ʿēlām''; peo, 𐎢𐎺𐎩 ''hūja'') was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretc ...
, dating from . In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late
Banesh
Banesh ( fa, بانش, also Romanized as Bānesh; also known as Bānish) is a village in Beyza District, Sepidan County, Fars Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 2,904, in 688 families.
The Banesh is located 60 km north ...
period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the oldest civilization in the territory of present-day
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
.
The Proto-Elamite script is an
Early Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
writing system briefly in use before the introduction of
Elamite cuneiform.
History
Background
During the period 8000–3700 BC, the
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent ( ar, الهلال الخصيب) is a crescent-shaped region in the Middle East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, together with the northern region of Kuwait, southeastern region of ...
witnessed the spread of small settlements supported by agricultural surplus. Geometric tokens emerged to be used to manage
stewardship of this surplus.
[Salvador Carmona & Mahmoud Ezzamel:''Accounting And Forms Of Accountability In Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamia And Ancient Egypt'', ]IE Business School
IE Business School is a graduate and undergraduate school of business, located in Madrid, Spain, European Union, Europe. It was founded in 1973 under the name Instituto de Empresa and since 2009 is part of IE University. IE Business School runs ...
, IE Working Paper WP05-21, 2005), p.6 The earliest tokens now known are those from two sites in the Zagros region of Iran:
Tepe Asiab
Tepe may refer to:
*the Persian word for ' tell', a type of earthen mound
*''tepe'', a common element in Persian-language toponyms; see
*Tepe, Bismil, a village in Turkey
*Tepe, Dicle, a village in Turkey
*Tepe, Iran, a village in Markazi Provi ...
and
Ganj-i-Dareh Tepe.
The
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
n civilization emerged during the period 3700–2900 BC amid the development of technological innovations such as the
plough
A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...
,
sailing boats
A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails and is smaller than a sailing ship. Distinctions in what constitutes a sailing boat and ship vary by region and maritime culture.
Types
Although sailboat terminology ...
, and
copper metal working.
Clay tablet
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets ( Akkadian ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age.
Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a sty ...
s with
pictographic
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...
characters appeared in this period to record commercial transactions performed by the
temples
A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...
.
Proto-Elamite sites
The most important Proto-Elamite sites are
Susa
Susa ( ; Middle elx, 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, translit=Šušen; Middle and Neo- elx, 𒋢𒋢𒌦, translit=Šušun; Neo-Elamite and Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, translit=Šušán; Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼, translit=Šušá; fa, شوش ...
and
Anshan
Anshan () is an inland prefecture-level city in central-southeast Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, about south of the provincial capital Shenyang. As of the 2020 census, it was Liaoning's third most populous city with a population ...
. Another important site is
Tepe Sialk
Tepe Sialk ( fa, تپه سیلک) is a large ancient archeological site (a ''tepe'', "hill, tell") in a suburb of the city of Kashan, Isfahan Province, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. The culture that inhabited this area has been linked t ...
, where the only remaining Proto-Elamite
ziggurat
A ziggurat (; Cuneiform: 𒅆𒂍𒉪, Akkadian: ', D-stem of ' 'to protrude, to build high', cognate with other Semitic languages like Hebrew ''zaqar'' (זָקַר) 'protrude') is a type of massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia. It has ...
is still seen. Texts in the undeciphered Proto-Elamite script found in Susa are dated to this period. It was originally assumed that the Proto-Elamites were in fact Elamites (
Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
speakers), because of cultural similarities (for example, the building of ziggurats), and because no large-scale migration to this area seems to have occurred between the Proto-Elamite period and the later Elamites. As Proto-Elamite writing has now been found over a wider area that is less certain.
Proto-Elamite pottery dating back to the last half of the 5th millennium BC has been found in Tepe Sialk, where Proto-Elamite writing, the first form of writing in
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, has been found on tablets of this date. The first
cylinder seal
A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in length, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally ...
s come from the Proto-Elamite period, as well.
Some anthropologists, such as John Alden, maintain that Proto-Elamite influence grew rapidly at the end of the 4th millennium BC and declined equally rapidly with the establishment of maritime trade in the
Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Persis, Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a Mediterranean sea (oceanography), me ...
several centuries later.
Proto-Elamite script
![Development of writing](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Development_of_writing.jpg)
A few Proto-Elamite signs seem either to be loans from the slightly older proto-cuneiform (Late
Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
) tablets of Mesopotamia, or perhaps more likely, to share a common origin in the earliest 4th millennium numeral tablets: both systems share a few common signs, particularly related to numerals and the objects they counted (such as slaves, females, pots...). Otherwise, the two scripts are quite different, using entirely different signs. The writing style also is different: whereas proto-cuneiform is written in visual hierarchies (boxes), Proto-Elamite is written in an in-line style. In Proto-Elamite numerical signs follow the objects they count; some non-numerical signs are 'images' of the objects they represent, although the majority are entirely abstract.
![Proto-Elamite tablet with transcription](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Proto-Elamite_tablet_with_transcription.jpg)
Basic numerical tablets with pictorials for the objects being counted (numerical tablets and numero-logogrammatic tablets) have been
carbon dated
Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.
The method was dev ...
to 3500-3000 BCE, from the sites of
Godin Tepe
Godin Tepe is an archaeological site in western Iran, located in the valley of Kangavar in Kermanshah Province. Discovered in 1961, the site was excavated from 1965 to 1973 by a Canadian expedition headed by T. Cuyler Young Jr. and sponsored by ...
,
Habuba Kabira,
Jebel Aruda
Jabal, Jabel, Jebel or Jibal may refer to:
People
* Jabal (name), a male Arabic given name
* Jabal (Bible), mentioned in the Hebrew Bible
Places
In Arabic, ''jabal'' or ''jebel'' (spelling variants of the same word) means 'mountain'.
* Dzhebel, ...
,
Tell Brak
Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city' ...
and
Tepe Hissar. These early numerical tablets are similar to those found in Mesopotamia. Proper Proto-Elamite was used soon after, for a brief period between 3300 and 3000 BCE (circa the
Jemdet Nasr period
The Jemdet Nasr Period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). It is generally dated from 3100 to 2900 BC. It is named after the type site Tell Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first r ...
of Mesopotamia).
Linear Elamite
Linear Elamite was a writing system used in Elam during the Bronze Age between , and known mainly from a few extant monumental inscriptions. It was used contemporaneously with Elamite cuneiform and records the Elamite language. The French archae ...
is attested much later in the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BCE. It is uncertain whether the Proto-Elamite script was the direct predecessor of
Linear Elamite
Linear Elamite was a writing system used in Elam during the Bronze Age between , and known mainly from a few extant monumental inscriptions. It was used contemporaneously with Elamite cuneiform and records the Elamite language. The French archae ...
. Both scripts remain largely undeciphered, and a postulated relationship between the two is speculative.
Proponents of an
Elamo-Dravidian relationship have looked for similarities between the Proto-Elamite script and the
Indus script
The Indus script, also known as the Harappan script, is a corpus of symbols produced by the Indus Valley Civilisation. Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not they constituted ...
.
Early on, similarities were noted between Proto-Elamite and the Cretan
Linear A
Linear A is a writing system that was used by the Minoans of Crete from 1800 to 1450 BC to write the hypothesized Minoan language or languages. Linear A was the primary script used in palace and religious writings of the Minoan civil ...
script.
Inscription corpus
The Proto-Elamite writing system was used over a very large geographical area, stretching from Susa in the west, to
Tepe Yahya
Tapeh Yahya () is an archaeological site in Kermān Province, Iran, some south of Kerman city, south of Baft city and 90 km south-west of Jiroft.
History
Habitation spans the 6th to 2nd millennia BCE and the 10th to 4th centuries BCE.
...
in the east, and perhaps beyond. The known corpus of inscriptions consists of some 1600 tablets, the vast majority unearthed at Susa.
Proto-Elamite tablets have been found at the following sites (in order of number of tablets recovered):
*
Susa
Susa ( ; Middle elx, 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, translit=Šušen; Middle and Neo- elx, 𒋢𒋢𒌦, translit=Šušun; Neo-Elamite and Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, translit=Šušán; Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼, translit=Šušá; fa, شوش ...
(more than 1500 tablets)
*
Anshan
Anshan () is an inland prefecture-level city in central-southeast Liaoning province, People's Republic of China, about south of the provincial capital Shenyang. As of the 2020 census, it was Liaoning's third most populous city with a population ...
, or Malyan (more than 30 tablets)
*
Tepe Yahya
Tapeh Yahya () is an archaeological site in Kermān Province, Iran, some south of Kerman city, south of Baft city and 90 km south-west of Jiroft.
History
Habitation spans the 6th to 2nd millennia BCE and the 10th to 4th centuries BCE.
...
(27 tablets)
*
Tepe Sialk
Tepe Sialk ( fa, تپه سیلک) is a large ancient archeological site (a ''tepe'', "hill, tell") in a suburb of the city of Kashan, Isfahan Province, in central Iran, close to Fin Garden. The culture that inhabited this area has been linked t ...
(22 tablets)
*Tape Sofalin (12 tablets and fragments
*
Jiroft
Jiroft ( fa, جیرفت, also Romanized as Jīroft; formerly, Sabzāwārān, Sabzevārān, Sabzevārān-e Jiroft, and Sabzvārān) is a city and capital of Jiroft County, Kerman Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 95,031, in ...
(two tablets)
*
Ozbaki (one tablet)
*
Shahr-e Sukhteh
Shahr-e Sukhteh ( fa, شهر سوخته, meaning " heBurnt City"), c. 3200–2350 BCE,
also spelled as ''Shahr-e Sūkhté'' and ''Shahr-i Sōkhta'', is an archaeological site of a sizable Bronze Age urban settlement, associated with the Helmand ...
(one tablet)
None of the inscribed objects from Ghazir,
Chogha Mish
Tappeh-ye Choghā Mīsh (Persian language; چغامیش ''čoġā mīš'') dating back to 6800 BC, is the site of a Chalcolithic settlement in Western Iran, located in the Khuzistan Province on the Susiana Plain. It was occupied at the beginni ...
or
Hissar can be verified as Proto-Elamite; the tablets from Ghazir and Choga Mish are Uruk IV style or numerical tablets, whereas the Hissar object cannot be classified at present. The majority of the Tepe Sialk tablets are also not proto-Elamite, strictly speaking, but belong to the period of close contact between Mesopotamia and Iran, presumably corresponding to Uruk V - IV.
Decipherment attempts
In 2020, , of the Laboratoire Archéorient (Lyon, France), announced a proposed decipherment and translation of proto-Elamite texts. As yet no scholarly paper has been published on this proposal.
Although the decipherment of Proto-Elamite has remains uncertain, the content of many texts is known. This is possible because certain signs, and in particular a majority of the numerical signs, are similar to the neighboring Mesopotamian writing system, proto-cuneiform. In addition, a number of the proto-Elamite signs are actual images of the objects they represent. However, the majority of the proto-Elamite signs are entirely abstract, and their meanings can only be deciphered through careful
graphotactical analysis.
While the Elamite language has been suggested as a likely candidate underlying the Proto-Elamite inscriptions, there is no positive evidence of this. The earliest Proto-Elamite inscriptions, being purely
ideographical, do not in fact contain any linguistic information, and following Friberg's 1978/79 study of
Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...
ern
metrology, decipherment attempts have moved away from linguistic methods.
In 2012, Dr Jacob Dahl of the
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, announced a project to make high-quality images of Proto-Elamite clay tablets and publish them online. His hope is that
crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
by academics and amateurs working together would be able to understand the script, despite the presence of mistakes and the lack of phonetic clues.
Dahl assisted in making the images of nearly 1600 Proto-Elamite tablets online. Materials were put online
on a wiki of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative.
Proto-Elamite cylinder seals
Proto-Elamite seals follow the seals of the
Uruk period
The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after ...
, with which they share many stylistic elements, but display more individuality and a more lively rendering.
File:Susa III or Proto-Elamite cylinder seal 3150-2800 BC Louvre Museum Sb 1484.jpg, Susa III
Susa ( ; Middle elx, 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, translit=Šušen; Middle and Neo- elx, 𒋢𒋢𒌦, translit=Šušun; Neo- Elamite and Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, translit=Šušán; Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼, translit=Šušá; fa, شوش ...
/ Proto-Elamite cylinder seal, 3150-2800 BC. Louvre Museum
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, reference Sb 1484
File:Susa III or Proto-Elamite cylinder seal 3150-2800 BC Louvre Museum Sb 2675.jpg, Susa III/ Proto-Elamite cylinder seal 3150-2800 BC Louvre Museum Sb 2675
File:Susa III or Proto-Elamite cylinder seal 3150-2800 BC Mythological being on a boat Louvre Museum Sb 6379.jpg, Susa III/ Proto-Elamite cylinder seal 3150-2800 BC Mythological being on a boat Louvre Museum Sb 6379
File:Proto-Elamite seal impression.jpg, Proto-Elamite seal impression: combat between man-bull and animals
See also
*
History of Iran
The history of Iran is intertwined with the history of a larger region known as Greater Iran, comprising the area from Anatolia in the west to the borders of Ancient India and the Syr Darya in the east, and from the Caucasus and the Eurasian S ...
*
Jiroft culture
The Jiroft cultureOscar White MuscarellaJiroft(2008), in: Encyclopedia Iranica. "For archeological accuracy the terms "Jiroft" or "Jiroft culture" employed to define a specific ancient Iranian culture and its artifacts should only be cited within ...
References
Literature
* Logan Born et al., "Compositionality of Complex Graphemes in the Undeciphered Proto-Elamite Script using Image and Text Embedding Model
in Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL-IJCNLP 2021, pp. 3136–3146 August 2021
* Jacob L. Dahl, "Complex Graphemes in Proto-Elamite," in ''Cuneiform Digital Library Journal'' (''CDLJ''
2005:3 Download
PDF copyJacob L. Dahl, "The proto-Elamite seal MDP 16, pl. XII fig. 198", in ''Cuneiform Digital Library Notes'', CDLN 2014:1, 2014
Jacob L. Dahl, "New and old joins in the Louvre proto-Elamite tablet collection", in ''Cuneiform Digital Library Notes'', CDLN 2012:6, 2012
* Dahl, Jacob L, "Animal Husbandry in Susa during the Proto-Elamite Period" SMEA, vol.47, pp. 81–134, 2005
* Peter Damerow, “The Origins of Writing as a Problem of Historical Epistemology,” in ''Cuneiform Digital Library Journal'' (''CDLJ''
2006:1 Download
PDF copy* Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund, ''The Proto-Elamite Texts from Tepe Yahya'', The American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin 39; Cambridge, MA, 1989
Englund, R.K, "The Proto-Elamite Script," in: Peter Daniels and William Bright, eds. The World's Writing Systems (1996). New York/Oxford, pp. 160–164, 1996
* Robert H. Dyson, “Early Work on the Acropolis at Susa. The Beginning of Prehistory in Iraq and Iran,” ''Expedition'' 10/4 (1968) 21–34.
* Jöran Friberg, ''The Third Millennium Roots of Babylonian Mathematics I-II'' (Göteborg, 1978/79).
ansen, Donald, et al. “A Proto-Elamite Silver Figurine in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, vol. 3, 1970, pp. 5–26
Laura F. Hawkins, "A New Edition of the Proto-Elamite Text MDP 17", ''Cuneiform Digital Library Journal'', CDLJ 2015:001, 2015
* A. Le Brun, “Recherches stratigraphiques a l’acropole de Suse, 1969-1971,” in '' Cahiers de la Délégation archaéologique Française en Iran 1 '' (= CahDAFI 1; Paris, 1971) 163 – 216.
* Piero Meriggi, ''La scritura proto-elamica. Parte Ia: La scritura e il contenuto dei testi'' (Rome, 1971).
* Piero Meriggi, ''La scritura proto-elamica. Parte IIa: Catalogo dei segni'' (Rome, 1974).
* Piero Meriggi, ''La scritura proto-elamica. Parte IIIa: Testi'' (Rome, 1974).
* Daniel T. Potts, ''The Archaeology of Elam'' (Cambridge, UK, 1999).
* Saeedi, Sepideh, Proto-Elamite Communities under the Magnifying Glas
in: Abar, Aydin et al. (Hrsg.): Pearls, Politics and Pistachios: Essays in Anthropology and Memories on the Occasion of Susan Pollock's 65th Birthday, Heidelberg: Propylaeum, 2021, pp. 61–87.
* Sax, M., and A. P. Middleton. "The Use of Volcanic Tuff as a Raw Material for Proto-Elamite Cylinder Seals." Iran, vol. 27, 1989, pp. 121–23
Francois Vallat, The Most Ancient Scripts of Iran: The Current Situation, World Archaeology, vol. 17, no. 3, Early Writing Systems, pp. 335–347, (Feb., 1986)
External links
Interview with Francois Desset on his proposed decipherment - The Postil Magazine - Sep 2021Cuneiform Digital Library InitiativeCuneiform Digital Library Initiative The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is an international digital library project aimed at putting text and images of an estimated 500,000 recovered cuneiform tablets created from between roughly 3350 BC and the end of the pre-Christian er ...
* (crowdsourcing materials)
Graphic, with article, of a Proto-Elamite tabletArt of the Bronze Age: Southeastern Iran, Western Central Asia, and the Indus Valley an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Proto-Elamite culture
Preliminary proposal to encode ProtoElamite in Unicode - Anshuman Pandey 2020
{{Rulers of the Ancient Near East
4th millennium BC
3rd millennium BC
Bronze Age writing systems
Elamite language
Jiroft culture
Obsolete writing systems
States and territories disestablished in the 3rd millennium BC
States and territories established in the 4th millennium BC
Undeciphered writing systems