Proto-Elamite script

The Proto-Elamite script is an early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.

There are many similarities between the Proto-Elamite tablets and the contemporaneous proto-cuneiform tablets of the Uruk IV period in Mesopotamia. Both writing systems are a relatively isolated phenomenon. Singletons aside tablets have been found at only five Proto-Elamite sites. For comparison, Proto-cuneiform tablets have only been found at Uruk, Jemdet Nasr, Khafajah, and Tell Uqair, and the vast majority of each type have been found at Susa and Uruk. The tablet blanks themselves, the inscribing method, even the practice of using the reverse for summation, when needed, are the same. They serve the same basic function which is administrative accounting of goods in a centrally controlled society. From that base, there are also differences, the signs themselves being the most obvious but extending to smaller areas such as the order in which the tablet was inscribed, are clear. Fortunately, there are a number of similarities between the numeric systems of Proto-cuneiform and Proto-Elamite. Proto-Elamite, in addition to the usual sexagesimal and base-120, also uses its own decimal system.

Beginning around the 9th millennium BC, a token based system came into use in various parts of the ancient Near East. These evolved into marked tokens and later marked envelopes, often called clay bullae. It is usually assumed that these were the basis for the development of Proto-Elamite as well as proto-cuneiform (with many of the tokens, about two-thirds, having been found in Susa). Tokens remained in use after the development of proto-cuneiform and Proto-Elamite.

The earliest tablets found in the region are of a "numerical" type, containing only lists of numbers. They are found not only at Susa and Uruk, but in a variety of sites, including those without later Proto-Elamite and proto-cuneiform tablets, like Tell Brak, Habuba Kabira, Tepe Hissar, Godin Tepe and Jebel Aruda.

Linear Elamite is attested much later in the last quarter of the. It is uncertain whether the Proto-Elamite script was the direct predecessor of Linear Elamite. Both scripts remain largely undeciphered, and a postulated relationship between the two is speculative.

Early on, similarities were noted between Proto-Elamite and the Cretan Linear A script.

Corpus
The Proto-Elamite writing system was used over a very large geographical area, stretching at least from Susa in the west to Tepe Yahya in the east. 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 how many tablets have been recovered:
 * Susa (more than 1600 tablets and fragments)
 * Anshan, or Tall-I Malyan (33 tablets and fragments)
 * Tepe Yahya (27 tablets, tablet blanks found)
 * Tepe Sofalin (12 tablets and fragments)
 * Tepe Sialk (5 tablets)
 * Ozbaki (one tablet)
 * Shahr-e Sukhteh (one tablet)
 * Tal-e Ghazir (one numerical tablet fragment)

Glyphs found in Proto-Elamite texts are divided in numerical (with an N profix) and text (with a M prefix). Of the 1000s of text glyphs in the current corpus more than half are numerical. The meaning of a numerical glyph may depend on which system it is being used in, decimal (D), sexagesimal (S), bisexagesimal (B), or capacity (C).

Publications

 * MDP 6 - V. Scheil, "Textes élamites-sémitiques (Troisième série)", Mémoires de La Délégation En Perse 6, Paris: Leroux, 1905
 * MDP 17 - V. Scheil, "Textes de  Comptabilité  Proto-Élamites (Nouvelle  Série)", Mémoires de La Mission Archéologique de Perse, Tome 17, Paris, 1923
 * MDP 26 - V. Scheil, "Textes de  Comptabilité  Proto-Élamites (Troisième Série)", Mémoires de La Mission Archéologique de Perse, Tome 26., Paris, 1935
 * MDP 31 - Mecquenem, Roland de, and Marguerite Rutten, "Épigraphie Proto-Élamite ; Archéologie Susienne", Mémoires de La Délégation Archéologique En Iran, Tome 31. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949
 * RA 50 - de MECQUENEM, R., "Notes Protoélamites", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 200–04, 1956
 * TCL 32 - Dahl, J. L., "Proto-Elamite Tablets and Fragments", Textes Cunéiforme du Louvre 32, Paris: Khéops /Louvre éditions Publishing, 2019

Decipherment attempts
The first step in deciphering an unknown writing system is getting the known corpus fully published and developing a proposed sign list. The publishing of the texts has now been mostly completed but the sign list is still partly a work in progress. Proto-Elamite has many singleton signs (like early stages of proto-cuneiform) due to texts being primarily consumed only locally and there is disagreement over whether some signs are different or merely variants but by 1974 enough of a consensus over the Proto-Elamite signs has been reached to enable the decipherment process to advance.

In 2012, Dr Jacob Dahl of the 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 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.

In 2020, François Desset, of the Laboratoire Archéorient in Lyon, France, announced a proposed decipherment and translation of proto-Elamite texts. In 2022 Desset published a paper on Linear Elamite which also proposed sign forms for Proto-Elamite (recasting it as "Early Proto-Iranian"). This new proposal was not met with universal agreement.

Although the decipherment of Proto-Elamite 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 graphemic analysis.

While the Elamite language has been suggested as a candidate underlying the Proto-Elamite inscriptions, there is no positive evidence of this. The earliest Proto-Elamite inscriptions, being purely ideographic, do not in fact contain any linguistic information nor is it known for certain what language was spoken in the relevant area during the Proto-Elamite Period.