Mysterious ancient language discovered in Iran in 1903 decoded

CAIRO – 5 September 2022: Linguists have been trying to decipher and translate a mysterious type of ancient language known as Linear Elamite for more than 100 years. 

This writing system was used by people who lived in southern Iran between 2300 and 1800 BC.

A team of scholars claims to have deciphered important sections of the Linear Elamite script recovered from various Iranian archaeological sites over the past 120 years. However, these claims have been met with a fair amount among the academics specializing in the field of ancient language decoding, according to ancient-origins.

The first artifacts inscribed with this language were discovered during an excavation project in 1903 on an ancient acropolis in Susa, Iran.

A team of experts led by French archaeologist François Desset, now teaching at the University of Tehran, has analyzed eight well-preserved inscriptions found on silver cups, seeking to explain their full meaning.

They did this by comparing the ancient text with cuneiform texts from the same time period that were written in a deciphered Middle Eastern script.

The cuneiform inscriptions contained the names of the rulers, lists of their titles, and descriptions of what they accomplished.

Scholars learned from the results of previous decipherments that Linear Elamite referred to some of the same rulers, and had hoped to translate the written samples using cuneiform texts as their model. 

In other words, since they know what the cuneiform texts say in their entirety, they can proceed with the assumption that the Linear Elamite would often say the same.