Proto-Elamite

By Kathryn Kelley

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1009614576
• ISBN13: 9781009614573
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 122 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"