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Proto-Elamite

Proto-Elamite

Paperback

Series: Elements in Writing in the Ancient World

Archaeology

ISBN10: 1009614576
ISBN13: 9781009614573
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: Aug 6 2026
Pages: 122
Weight: 0.38
Height: 0.26 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Proto-Elamite is one of the world's earliest scripts and it remains only very partly deciphered. Excavations have uncovered c. 1,700 clay tablets from Iran, dating c. 3300-2900 BCE. The tablets use a complex system involving hundreds of symbols to count commodities, people, and institutions. Despite holding a privileged place in the history of writing, the study of proto-Elamite falls outside modern disciplinary boundaries and has received very limited scholarly attention since its discovery over a century ago. Nonetheless, a handful of scholars have shown that there is much we can learn about proto-Elamite and the people who used it, especially by taking interdisciplinary approaches. The ongoing decipherment project combines mathematics, a range of comparative studies, and a sustained effort to digitize the corpus and apply new tools from computer science.

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Kelley, Kathryn

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Archaeology