When we talk about the origins of writing, Egypt and Mesopotamia always come up. But there was a third system, Proto-Elamite, originating from present-day Iran. Discovered 125 years ago, it has lived in academic obscurity. New analyses indicate that, 5,000 years ago, it may have been the most advanced of the three in representing spoken language. Its clay tablets, found in Susa, await decipherment.
Innovation in clay: technical keys of the Proto-Elamite system 🏺
Proto-Elamite tablets, dated to about 5,200 years ago, were inscribed on wet clay, a technique similar to Mesopotamian proto-cuneiform. In fact, they share signs, such as that of the sheep, suggesting direct inspiration. However, the Iranian system developed its own complexity, with a capacity for recording economic information that may have surpassed its contemporaries. Its detailed analysis is revealing a sophisticated internal logic, although we still cannot read it.
5,300 years and no one knows what's on the invoice 🐑
Imagine having the world's oldest shopping receipt and not being able to read it. That's Proto-Elamite: a five-millennia-old accounting record system that experts look at like someone seeing an invoice from an unknown bank. While the Egyptians wrote about gods and the Mesopotamians about kings, these folks just wanted to keep track of the sheep. And they did it so well that we still don't know how many were owed.