Decipherment of Linear Elamite
Desciframiento del elamita lineal
- Date
- 2020-2022 · confidence high
- Place
- University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
- Credited to
- François Desset, with Kambiz Tabibzadeh, Matthieu Kervran, Gian Pietro Basello and Gianni Marchesi
- People
- 👤 François Desset1982–👤 Gianni Marchesi1967–👤 Gian Pietro Basello1974–
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A proposed phonetic reading of almost all the signs of Linear Elamite, a syllabic and alphabetic script from Iran (c. 2300-1880 BCE), based on silver vessels with parallel cuneiform texts. It would add a newly deciphered ancient script to the history of Iran.
Published in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie (2022); some specialists consider the decipherment promising but not yet confirmed, and the authenticity of some vessels in the Mahboubian collection has been questioned.
What it led to
- reading of the royal inscriptions of Puzur-Inshushinak
- the history of the Elamite language
- the study of proto-Elamite writing