Proto-Elamite : Writing and Society in Early Iran - Kathryn Kelley

Kathryn Kelley

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  • Pages · 122 pages, Worked examples or Exercises
  • Publication Date · 31/08/2026
  • Genre · BCE to c 500 CE
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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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