Deciphering Linear Elamite Writing: François Desset on Iran's Ancient Script

[00:00:31]okay we are going to start very quickly I just wanted to thank us of course the organization team Persian wonders and all people who organized this event um and it has been years I've been working on a linear alamai just a few words and a personal uh perspective I've been working on it since 2006.

[00:00:55]and now I can say that it has been deciphered and very proud of that I'm going to show you the the main result the the big monograph is going to be published next next year and so I'm very because that's the first time I'm doing that publicly and so I'm very proud to do it in front of you of course in Cambridge uh Cameron you played a very important role and also there is also Mr John Curtis and you were very fundamental in making the connection between me and the mabubian family so thanks a lot so uh we are going to talk of course about Iran you know where it is here the Iranian history we can consider it as organized in two big urbanization Cycles the first one starting in the 10th 9th millennium BC and ending in a second Million BC that's the first urbanization cycle on the Iranian plateau and the second one starting in this dark Millennium the second millennium BC where the iranian-speaking people are supposed to arrive you ancestors are supposed to arrive on the Iranian plateau and in this uh in the first cycle in the first humanization cycle this is here the Apex or the climax of this first urbanization cycle is the third millennium BC here and we are going to talk mainly about this Millennium which for us archaeologists is like a golden age because it's the time of the first cities first rating systems arts and first States and trade with uh long distance trade well this is a slide which I show usually in Europe so it's not the point here usually the Iranian history we know more about the accommended period of course but it's more quite recent it's just the sixth Fifth and fourth Century BC of course Mr Curtis for him it's a very important period but here we are going to talk about more ancient stuff a map of Iran at that time per se police and a very important low relief by relief in the tiran museum and they were using at that time in Iran cuneiform rating system of course another important period is the Sasha need one at the end of antiquity and beginning of middle age for us in Europe here is a map of the Persian Empire the times the sunny Empire a very famous wealth well known for very specific urbanization this is uh firozabad in soften fast and very nice uh wonderful relief in nashir rustam at the time of shapur the first chapter the Great and and they were using at that time an Aramaic derived alphabet to record the Persian language middle passion language well okay and of course there is a very important period also in Iranian history it's the safavid period or maybe it's um sorry remember you you hear me when I I talk like that yeah okay yeah yeah okay Silva yeah okay well and then a very important period also the safavid period 16 18th century uh A.D quite recent period at that time modern Iran appeared here is the map of Iran at that time and of course famous for his its well-known capital of his Faron and a very nice mosca of his farm and they were using at that time the Arabic alphabet and you are still using in Iran the Arabic alphabet to record the Quran modern passion language with usually Style okay thank you okay hello uh hello camera very frequent mistake and I Know It uh from experience it's a mistake confusion between language and writing so we are going to first talk about that just to make clear how the diseasement was possible so language here is the current diffusion of language in the world so it's not the topic of the conference but just to focus on the Indo-European languages as you know uh this hindu-european languages they are spread from historically spread from Western Europe to India well this is not just to say that okay Persian language is of course an Indo-European language as English which is a Germanic one and which is of course an Indo-European one so ah well let's work without the let me okay so what is what is the difference between that this and that writing is different I mean fish so the writing a different but here is written the same thing Hi how are you Hi how are you so here it's written with three different rating systems is written the same linguistic information in English in the Latin alphabet in the Arabic alphabet and in linear alamite okay so the same language English but recorded with three different rating systems well what is the difference between that this and that the same we have the same phonetic information information in Persian language Hi how are you in person but we call it in linear alamites Arabic alphabet and Latin alphabet so same linguistic same language but different writing systems and it's also the English phenomenon you know recording Persian language both with the Arabic alphabet or the Latin one but we have also this where we have the same writing system Latin alphabet recording different languages English French and Persian so just these two for you to uh clearly separate languages from writing systems these are not the same thing and I know that usually people are making some confusion about that here is the current distribution of the rating systems in the world and as you can see nowadays Iran is part of the Arabic alphabet Community or in Iran usually you don't like when we we say that it's you are writing with the Arabic alphabet but yes this is the Arabic alphabet and not the Persian one slightly modified Arabic alphabet okay so let's talk about the engineerist which is a very important area for world history and I just want a to tell you why and all of this uh because it's the Cradle of rating system and why is all the stuff appeared in this area because that was the first place in the world where Agriculture and stock breeding appeared something like 12 000 years ago around 10 000 BC this is the Neolithic period and for Earth psychologies that's the beginning of everything because from in this perspective we are still living in the Neolithic period nowadays because our current way of life is based on agriculture and stock breeding and now we know very well oh it spread from the nearest here you have the C40 you have the dating BC dating and it started more or less here and the 10th millennium BC and for example it arrived in UK but it was not UK at that time of course but at the end of the fifth millennium BC stock breeding and agriculture so that explain of course the importance of the ancient nearest okay now we are going to focus more on writing so I'm going to show you three Maps first one okay a Jeep is a potential China second one Egypt uniform in Mesopotamia the Maya in Mexico and Chinese of course in China and the last one French one but what is the common point between all these Maps which are trying to show the origin of rating in the world none of them is mentioning Iran Iran usually in current reconstruction it's never mentioned and it's a big pity and this should be modified as soon as possible so this is the Wikipedia vulgar the current Paradigm usually accepted uh broadly accepted we would are at the origin of everything the first and the most ancient rating system in the world will be the product uniform writing in Mesopotamia so in Iraq nowadays Iraq and then from Iraq you will have an influence on so Elam it's Iran with the proto-alamide tablets and then or maybe Egyptian uh people working in a jeep I think they will not like this dotted line here but also that will have influenced also Egypt well I disagree with that that's not the point of this conference I'm not going to focus on it but as Cameron was saying I'm trying to change the narratives because I think I have the good arguments to do so and I'm proposing for the last 10 years that protoelemide rating which I'm going to talk about at the end of the conference is not the daughter of Proto uniform but they are sisters they are contemporary and more or less this free rating systems are the most ancient ones in the world at the end of the fourth millennium BC so more than five thousand years ago the origin of writing is then in Egypt Iraq Mesopotamia and Iran and we cannot determine what which area was the first one from c14 dating it's impossible for us to determine precisely where it appeared and then another big important point is we think that in Iran linear alamite which is the point of this conference is clearly separated from protoelamide and this also I disagree I think it is the same rating system but in a re-ent stage and a recent one okay but that's the same writing system so we are going to talk about linealamite today and this is what I was telling you that's move forward so I'm still in the introduction uh just before introducing you the this this assignment of linear alamite I just would like to show you how uh previous decipherments were made and we are going to talk about two famous the cypherments the euroglyph this aforement of hieroglyphs and also the decipherment of cuneiform rating system and in each case we are going to try so in each case you are going to understand that they proceed from the known to the unknown okay from something which was known to something which was not known and we are going to ask several questions first was the language recorded by the writing system known before the decipherment of this writing system first we are going to also wonder if proper names like King names place names or names of gods if they were previously known and of course last question if there are some billing well texts so here is the big uh French scholar Jean Francis uh this year is the e as this is deciphered hieroglyph rating exactly 200 years ago so it's a big uh I don't know in England it's if it's the case but in France we are talking a lot about Jean Franco champagne this day e-published in 1822 this work okay and usually people whenever we are talking about champagne most of the time people think yes the Rosetta Stone was very important so yes the Rosita Stone was very important uh it's bilingual Egyptian and Greek and bilingual and free graphic three graphic so there are three different rating system and two of them are actually recording the same linguistic information but what was the most important Point uh in the deciphonment of Jean Franco champagne it's the Coptic language the language recorded by the ancient hieroglyphs was an ancient version of the Coptic language which is still spoken nowadays in Egypt so in a way the work was easy because okay okay the work was easy because the language was still there the writing system is super complicated the Egyptian one compared to linear alamite but at least e add access to the modern version of the antique Egyptian language which is very important and of course he knew also the names of Egyptian kings thanks of thanks to the Latin and Greek sources and that's why he could read the names of at the beginning it's the reading of the foreign Kings or the it's the first reading for example Cleopatra so that was also very important in the this I found it so I just answered this question we can move forward and the Rosetta Stone in the nearest for this decipherment of cuneiform rating we can say that it's the ganjanami inscription so in Iran just nearby hamadan where we have thrilling wall inscriptions of archimenit Kings they are used the first and they assess the first so we are in the fifth century BC so let's move now to cuneiform writing so why am I explaining to you that just to show you all previous deciphonments they were made but also the discipline of linear alamite is based on the diseasement of cuniform so if I want to tell you the whole story I have first to talk about cuneiform rating so here are two great Scholars of the 19th century broadfand and rollinson it was fundamental in the discipline of all Persian language recorded with a specific uniform rating system and of course Rolling Stone was very important to achieve the old passion the recording in cuneiform decipherment and also the desirement of Acadian language recorded with cuniform so good friend based on the work of people like Uncle till duperon or also Sylvester he had a previous understanding of the royal sassanid inscriptions any new based on the work of Silvestro dosassi who deciphered the Arabic writing recorded the inscription of the sassanid Kings he knew that very frequently the title used by Persian kings is great king king of kings okay and he was looking for this kind of information in the cuneiform text of the academic Kings he was looking for the world king and the title King of Kings and actually he found them and here you are recorded in the cuneiform specific rating system developed for all Persian language King of King actually which means Kings of King it's shine and he knew that the beginning of the name of Jesus in all Persian was very probably similar to the beginning of the word King and that's how he could find the name of cross King but also the name of Jesus recorded with all cuneiform uh all in with the cuneiform rating recording the old fashioned language so a growth fund was able to decipher in the beginning of the 19th century more or less something like one third one half of the cuneiform signs used to record the pesh all Persian language so that was the first step So based on the previous knowledge of for example so in red are the languages in Black the rating system based on the previous knowledge of these languages Greek Hebrew a western language Sanskrit language it could have access to the old passion language recorded with the cuneiform as very specific uniform writing first step okay I told that then slightly later some decades later another scholar rolling son went to bisotune it's in Western Iran over there is not far from kirmansha and he made the copy of the Byzantine inscription which is trilingual also and based on his work he was able to complete the decipherment of the old Persian language recorded with cuneiform rating but also he could start and almost achieve the complete decipherment of one of the older languages recorded in the visitor inscription via kadian language Acadian so this thrilling World Academy description they are recorded in three with three different languages all Persian Acadian and elamites elamite we are going to talk more about that a few minutes later and as Acadian is a Semitic language very very very close by for example languages like Arabic or Hebrew that was really the key which opened all the cuneiform world because that it's very well understood the Acadian language and of course there is a very famous experience experiment in 1857 when they decided that Acadian language recorded with uniform writing was deciphered so these languages we got access to all person from old version and thanks to the Semitic languages we got access to Acadian language recorded with the cuneiform rating system and then from Acadian language recorded with the cuneiform rating system okay which I told you we went to uh sorry sometimes I'm writing hat and Tides so it's sorry it's a bit confusing we could have access to the elamites language because this uh thrilling trilingual inscription they act of their Community Kings they are recording the same information I am there used the king of the great king the king of kings and thanks to this trillingual inscription we could get access also to the elamite language recorded with cuneiform writing so but my language is really true is a really tricky language because compared to is a Semitic language I told you we can make a lot of for example the Arabic word for gate is Baba the Acadian word for gate is baboon so almost the same world in all Persian the old Persian language the current world for King in Persian is Shah the old person well it is so almost the same word okay but elamite is an isolate language like Sumerian like Basque language so we cannot make any comparison like that in order to understand this language so we have to rely on this thrilling World accommended inscriptions so here is one of the most ancient elamites inscription recorded uh I'm going to precise all the time the language and the writing system one of the most ancient elamite language inscription recorded with the cuneiform writing system it's uh it belongs to King King tattoo sorry we had more or less around 2000 BC here is the text so I'm not going to read it but we can read it more or less it's uh about God nappy Russia so record it with the cuneiform writing concerning elamide language we have two very important Tools in German which makes stuff a bit complicated uh well the first one is a copies of Royal inscriptions this one published in 1965 the very important another one which is very important is a dictionary dictionary of element language published in 1987 by Walter eons and Ida maricor which is very important also in the process of the decipherment of linear alarm hydrating well here is the end of the introduction and now we can proceed and we are going to talk more or sometimes I'm calling uh this is the current name linear alamite but I would like to propose new terminology and I'm calling it late proto-iranian rating system but don't pay attention to that so there are three steps in the decipherment first one is from 1903 to 2017 the second one 2017 2018 and the last one in the last year the 2018-2020 so it took me more or less I started to work on that in 2006 so it took me of more or less 11 years from 2006 to 2007. I was literally finding nothing so a lot of people told me Francois you should do something else and I was really considering doing something else because I was finding nothing anyway I'm very happy very proud to show you the decipherment of this rating system I hope you are going to understand very clearly oh I proceeded so we are in the third millennium BC in the Middle East yeah nearest here is the area of distribution of cuneiform rating in Red so from Sofia Mesopotamia it spread in Syria uh at the middle of the third millennium it also as you can see it spread in Southwestern Iran at the end of the third millennium BC with the Acadian annexation of this area but that's a that's a detail then at that time more or less 2250 BC we here is the area where they were using the linear alamite rating system so as you can see we in the current state of the knowledge a linear alamide rating is attested in southern Iran maybe in five years in 10 years we are going to find inscriptions there or there but anyway for now it's there and of course at that time also you are the Indus rating system which is still not the decipher we the linealamide writing uh inscription they were found in Souza in shadad giroth or Kona sandal she's a person more or less and they were found also a very important collection from camfiru's area the the collection of the mabubian family which was fundamental in the decipherment of clinalamide writing uh pay attention we just add 43 inscriptions in linear alamite it's very uh it's cool compared to the thousands of inscriptions known in cuneiform or euroglyphs it's true I I your knowledge it's not a lot I hope we are going to find more so this is how it looks like a stone monuments from uh Souza now in the loom Museum also uh clay uh clay inscriptions we have of course silver metallic vessel silver artifact with this linear Mite inscription and also we have a small Stone seal very probably coming from the Persian Gulf so what did we know before because I'm not I was not the first one who tried to do something with with this rating system and the first inscription they were found in Souza by the French team working at that time in Suza in 1903 and so of course many people try to do stuff with this rating system so I'm going to show you what was the scientific base on which I built so here is one of the most important description it was found in Souza it's the first one which was fun in 1903 it's in the Louvre so the text is there and you have actually you have two texts one of them it's written in cuneiform writing so we know it and it's recorded an accordion language inscription you have more or less here the translation and pay attention it's for the god in sushinak and it's bailed by somebody his name is we knew we were thinking his name was puzu in sushinag but not I can tell you his name is so it's very small difference and it well it was said that he was the son of shimpishuk so here are proper names in okay and Scholars from the beginning they were thinking that maybe with three names and also the name of the city of Souza maybe it was four names which were recorded we recorded here in a cuneiform writing maybe we will find them also in the linealamide text okay and so we have a linear alamite text so it's called the linear alamite inscription they are called based on the letters of the Latin alphabet they decided to do like that at the time so this is a the first one it's to be read like that from the right to the left from the top to the bottom okay and so the first design feminine attempt they were based on this inscription and here you can see two sequence very two uh important sequences where this color Ferdinand book as soon as 1905 equal see that in blue you have exactly the same sign sequences the same four signs okay and based on this he made the hypothesis that here is probably recorded the name of the god and here probably recorded the name of the ruler and for this reason he could identify Su Shi na KU okay well no this is the complete reading we know that thanks to the discipline and here it's recorded we look in a logo grammatic way I'm going to explain that a few slides after in cuneiform and here in a phonetic way with the linear alamite rating system okay so that's the base of the deciphonment as soon as the beginning of the 20th century they were able to identify at least these four signs based on the work of the first German Scholars Walter Inns proposed this signed list in the 1969 so it was very very very optimistic and self-confident but most of this reading actually they were wrong a very important Italian scholar was also working the 1960s 1970s on linealamide very serious very important work Piero merigi he was much more careful than Walter in he only accepted this reading but still many of them they are not they are not correct and in a book I published in 2012 I I was just accepting this reading so in the reading I was mentioning before and even actually the decipher man proved me that four of his reading actually I was wrong in 2012. so as you can see we only had one two three four five six seven eight and nine signs the Breakthrough was the Breakthrough was but first of all I got access to a new collection I'm going to refer to that in 2015 and it helped me a lot in the work of the cipherment so uh ushang mabubian publish in 2004 vessels from his collection in this book thanks to John Curtis thanks to the mabubian family I got access to these silver vessels in 2015.

[00:33:45]if I had access to these civil vessels in 2009 the discipline would have been made in 2011.

[00:33:54]but as I just got access to this silver sorry it's not uh I'm not criticizing that but uh if I had quicker access that would have been a okay anyway I got access to this silver vessel only in 2015 and the disappearment was starting in 2017.

[00:34:16]so here are some pictures of the mabubian collection and of course as many people were thinking that the provenance was not sure there were some people we were doubtful about them and that was my state of mind when I came to see the collection in 2015 open mind let's go and check them and we'll see what's going on so here is the paper because actually the decipherment started in 2018 this is the paper published in 2018 thanks to Cameron who is there and what uh so some pictures of this collection so here you have the three lines of inscription from the right to the left so X y three lines here just below the rim recorded from the right to the left and the fourth line is just beside the knee of the ruler yeah but it's recorded from the left to the right this one his name is itatu the tattoo the first it's written there we know it's a tattoo so he ruled around 1980 BC so it's early 20th century BC uh artifact so this is ITA II Sean being praying and the very important of transcription z nine lines one of the longest line inclusion so maybe you saw previously uniform inscription Euro glyph inscription and as you can see linear alamite is completely different not at all related to cuneiform or you agree with something else completely completely different another one from the left to the right Okay so I'm going to show you the steps of the initial uh by the initial steps of the decipherment and base notably on the beginning of these inscriptions so here I I put here the text of some of this linear linear alamites inscription it's recorded from the right to the left so as you can see many of them they were actually starting with the same sign ok I thought okay maybe this is an introductory sign not a big hypothesis but anyway then well this is not doing proper important this one then I realized that this free sign sign sequence it was also recorded in the inscriptions of Puzo sushinak in Souza so here it's recorded from the left to the right okay it's the same and I as I knew that in Souza it was just after the name of the ruler so what was my conclusion what may we expect just after the name of the ruler the title King Prince something like that so very probably a title so we come back to the silver vessels so between the introductory sign and the title here in pink what may I expect name of rulers just before the title foreign here it is it's four signs so that's the key actually is the key so I could date these silver vessels because they are as you can as you remember they are they have a very specific shape it's called kunanki kunanki vessel we know that they were used at between 2050 and 1850 BC thought they were used for 200 years at the end of the third and beginning of the second Million BC so that was probably the dating also this silver vessels so I was looking for a guy a woman or anybody somebody who lived at that time who are the name recorded with four signs so maybe probably uh four uh with four syllables the first one I knew it before it was used in the name Sushi nak sushi so the first syllable is she and the third so it's red to be read from the right to the left and the third and fourth sign is the same so a guy living at the beginning of second millennium BC a name with four syllabus the first one is she and the third and the fourth one are the same so as you could see uh I was very specific in my uh I'm just showing you what worked all the stuff which did not work I'm not that's not very important okay I'm just showing you what the stuff which work actually and actually there is a king who ruled at that time in Iran we know we knew his name thanks to the cuneiform text uh maybe you don't know shillara but no I'm I'm introducing you Shiloh he was the key of the disciplement because the disciplement started with the reading of his name and the reading shirara gave me access to two new signs l and ha this rule more or less around 900.

[00:40:15]50 BC in the middle of the 20th century BC okay so first step so this is what I found uh yes after two years when I was working with the mabubian collection this is what I found two years after five minutes after I was considering hey yeah maybe I can reach correctly and here I was now focusing on this name yeah also recorded with four sides actually this one I could guess it was very probably the sun because it's at the end of puzur that's the same idea so I was looking for a guy frequently Associated to shilohara because they are both mentioned in the same text add the name with four syllables the third one is so once again there is only one king and a party the second is very probably the father of Shira and this reading gave me access to three new signs so just these two readings gave me the value phonetic value of 5 signs okay so of course I was very very happy and uh uh the last reading I published in 2018 in the Iran paper here we have a sequence which is repeated many times in all the inscriptions it's a four or five sign sequence I could read the first sign it is not because it is not the third sign is okay and I guess that was the name of the main god worshiped by this dynasty at that time na Pi or sometimes they were using a double consonant sometimes they were not using double consonants so that gave me the value P re and sha so three other signs it means in my language great the great God so just this and these three readings I made them in 10 minutes it went very quickly uh when you opened the door it went very quickly and so in the 2018 paper actually I published the value phonetic value of 10 new signs so actually somebody who was reading seriously the paper knew that the the cipherment actually started at that time and so here is the final step in the decipherment 2018-2020 so the decipherment of the elamite language recorded with the sorry I told you I'm proto-iranian writing this is a linear alamide rating was based on the knowledge of the alamite language which was based on the cuneiform rating so I process from the known to the unknown foreign so as the Cameron just said it uh it uh the complete this almost complete decipherment of phenylamide was published a few months ago so uh just because I I can see that there are many Iranian people here in the audience oh somebody else should say that but it's bit like the ciphering if you were Egyptian it would be as important as deciphering the euroglyphs you know for Iranian culture and identity that was the first rating system used in Iran and actually that's the only one which was created by people living in this area because otherwise all the writing systems used in Iran they all they have they come from abroad the Arabic alphabet the Greek alphabet the cuneiform system it's all Western related it's the only one which is local okay so anyway a bit complicated I'm not suggesting you to read this paper you know okay but I'm going to give you a brief overview ah sorry so yeah as you can see I wrote this paper with four other Scholars can't be stability so I want to introduce you my colleagues and Jenny Marquez so the key here you have two inscriptions one of them is in uniform rating the other one is in obviously in linear alamide writing system this uh the key was inscriptions of the simachan Kings and sukalma Kings recorded with us in the same language the lmite language but with two different rating system cuneiform and linear alamite it's finglish situation okay finglish situation so we are not in the case of billing well text we just have one language we are in the case of we are in a d graphic or B scriptural situation okay same or similar text with the same linguistic information but recorded with two different writing systems so from the known through the unknown and I think here you are going to understand completely the the decipherment it comes from this vessel you have the reading uniform reading uh the it's in cuneiform you have the reading it's an element prayer in ilamide language prayer recorded at the time of the king say palerpak he ruled in the 18th century BC at the time of amurabi of Babylon so from the noon to the unknown and here it comes from this so usually it was written from the right to the left but I turned it from the left to the right to make it more simple and so what is the difference between this text and this one it's the same linguistic information we have the same prayer we call the ear in cuneiform rating and here with the linear alamit rating system so it took some time for me to find that actually they were recording the same prayer and this is the prayer in elamide language which we translate made the Monies it's a very probably an artifact uh made the monies of bronze be realized for my priests and as you can see this prayer was recorded around 1880 BC in linealamide rating and here two centuries after with the cuneiform rating system so this is the key when I could understand that actually this were the same linguistic information in two different rating system then actually it gave me the phonetic value of many other signs foreign situation it's exactly as the stuff I was showing you at the beginning okay it's exactly the same we have the same linguistic information but just recorded with different rating systems but is anybody uh the is it clear and because that's that's the the main point okay oh anyway so just for for you to give you an another example of this uh the graphia situation for example here we are in Croatia and here is recorded exactly the same linguistic information but with the Latin alphabet here and here with the Cyrillic alphabet okay it's exactly with the same type of situation so we were supposed to make a bridge to make a break where is uh some somewhere some some jelly where are you at the reception should we make a break [Music] well let me uh I'm what time is it let's let's keep on a bit okay so so now the decipherment is made I can read 96 percent of the signs so almost well there are some sign I'm going to show you they only attested once I cannot read them uh for now but I hope with more text we I will be able to read them but now as the decipherment has been made now we are facing another problem because we can read the text but now we have to translate them and as I told you element language is a bit complicated because this is an isolate language so honestly the cipher man is made but sometimes translation of element language is a bit tricky and it's either written recorded in linear alarm hydrating or actually in cuneiform rating so it's a bit complicated I'm going to show you three examples out of the 43 linear alamite inscriptions all I read and I understand them so one text from Souza Allen okay uh it's been dramatic situation oh let me show you the when should I stop I don't know exactly well anyway um so uh uh one of them so it's a puzzle Texas in the 22nd century BC it comes from Souza another one it's the very famous silver vessel from Marv Dash a very gorgeous famous vessel it dates back to the 21st century BC it's interior Museum and nowadays and the last one it comes from the mabubian collection so from the campfires area area and it's actually it's the most recent one it's the last linear alamite inscriptions currently known and after that it was probably the last scribe using the linealamide rating and then after him or her this rating system was recorded but we are going to see that after the break okay so I was about to present you three samples of free text this I recently deciphered and just to see with you what did they tell us what do they tell us so we are going to proceed with an inscription of fuzur sushinak the king Puzo sushinak in Suza in the 22nd century BC it's recorded on three stone slabs it was found in Souza it's in the lure now and actually when you compare the text it's the same text and so you can fill the gaps between each of the um because usually it's not they are not very well preserved so you can fill the gaps thanks to the free version of the text here is the complete text okay so it's recorded from the right to the left on the original inscription here I am showing it from the left to the right so let's read it in a elamite and let's give the translation in English the king of the bigger than so it's not the word Sun in Illinois they have a word for sun which is Shaq they did not use the word Sun they used a past particip present participle of a verb which is a very weird way to say that so the one bigotend by his father shimpish so that's the title the one big return by simply loves him the good in tsushinak loves him and then we enters the main part of the text limash so here as you can see I I am showing it in red why because I don't know this one I don't know the meaning of this world okay so I know that it means e bent that's the name of a placehan I guess lovelyere is very probably something which is related to hoposan he burnt the great the rich who pushes the place name so it's very public qualification of and we knew it before this place no no okay he enslaved under him and presented to him so I we are not sure about this verb too we're very probably the god in sushinak said that I burned the city for you I enslaved it and I gave it to you and of the sentence and the inscription ends with a curse formula and it starts here and here as you can see I'm not sure very not sure about the signs because they are not very well preserved I'm I have some hesitation between two sides this one I cannot read it yet because that's the first that's the only place where this sign is attested actually and yes so I'm bit I'm not as sure for the section before whoever Rebels it's written there whoever Rebels we have the verb here even the verb I'm not sure because either you don't have these two dots and you just have the cross inside and it's signed or you have nothing inside but the two dots here and it's signed who and it changed the web because if it's hatakina if it's a Techna it means to be rare it means to be destroyed and if it says it is to be realized so here the sign is not super well preserved and I'm not sure about the translation well anyway as you can see we have a quite good understanding the name of the king stated and affiliation the main part of the inscription I destroyed upshan and actually we knew it before on cuniform text was already mentioning the destruction of of upon and a curse formuladian classic Royal near Eastern inscription nothing well okay let's move forward the very famous Marv Dash vessel was found in the 1960s not so far from persepolis it is what pity it is the only linear Ami inscription currently held in Iran because of the whys most of them are either in Paris or in London but anyway so 20 very probably 21st century BC at least the inscription so this story is a bit complicated The Vessel was very probably made in Central Asia then it came in Iran in fast so Southwest and Iran it received this inscription so I can date I think I can date this inscription why because some of the signs are similar to The inscription of Puzo sushinag in the 22nd century but some of the signs are showing the same variant than the text we will have in the 20th century BC so I can read but also I can date based on the variation in the signs used so very probably written in the 21st century BC here is the text so it's recorded from the right to the left but here once again from the left to the right so let's read it it's cooler to read something which was not read uh for the last uh four thousand years and I'm I'm I'm not I'm not going to say I'm re in French we say at prayer uh I'm not sure I'm not really to have my end cut about the exact pronunciation of this text but as I was telling you know the LMI language is documented through cuneiform writing and through linear LMI ratings so we all knowledge about this language and about the phonology of this language really increased but anyway end of the first sentence so as you can see it's in Red so I don't know the meaning of this world so translation I very probably I the lady of madab Shai marab Shai is very uh it's not very properly it's a place name I think Cameron that's very probably the real name of marashi very probably not up Shy for the lady I the lady of marab Shai her name a silver between parentheses vessel and this is the verb o i share made I ordered I made and it's a verb which is only used for metallic artifact so I made something in metal well end of the first sentence actually very interesting because that's the most gorgeous inscription designed are so just uh you know when you just take a look at them it's amazing the quality of the inscription and there are two sentences so the first one is ending with I made I ordered and there are something like 44 signs the first sentence is 22 signs long and the second one is also 22 signs alone so the Scribe before rating this inscription he thought a lot about it before writing it next sentence Sian is the world Temple so in the temple then we have ishmanirina I don't know it's not in the dictionary very probably a qualification of Sian so name of a place adjective I don't know in the temple ishmanirina okay for you probably whom shat we don't know him or uh out of devotion so please pay attention to this notion of kere very important I'm going to talk about more in the next slide out of devotion no it's you for you benevolently I deposited I gave so first sentence I made second sentence I gave classic vote inscription okay so as you can see I can read all the signs and the meaning translation is more or less quite sure okay so so we live beside the uh The lineala Matrix and the decimal I think has huge consequences on the story of writing in the world just huge consequences on the history of the world and it's going to change the way we were considering the evolution operating system according to a progressive phonetization well there are two big types of rating system in the wall either logo grammatic or phonogrammatic if I'm asking you to write 1000 Euros or are you going to write it yeah 1 000 Euros or you're going to rate it is here and then yeah okay nice and good and sure but you could have also written it like that but here is a logogrammatic notation you are recording the ID of 1 000 Euros because uh here you are recording the sound of the world in English language one thousand Euros but this you could read it in French Milo or in Persian either Europe so you are not recording the sound you are recording the ID ok so this is a logogrammatic before we were saying idiogrammatic but now we say logo grammatic this is a logogrammatic notation and this is a phonetic one so as this is uh was said you know everything about the different rating system in the world either logogrammatic or phonetic and usually it's neither either phonetic or logar grammatic it's a mixed for example currently when we are using the Latin alphabet we are using phonetic notation but whenever we are using the Arabic numbers we are turning back to a logogrammatic notation so we are using a mixed rating system actually here is the place where the most ancient rating systems in the world appear of course a euroglies in Egypt cuneiform in Mesopotamia linear lamide in southern Iran and the Indus rating system in India so we are in the third millennium BC let's not talk about in this rating system because it's not deciphered yet so okay exit if we focus on all uroglyphs and cuneiform worked they are mixed it means that they are both phonetic and logogrammatic so here you have the you have the word Sharon in Academia it means king okay it's written here so it's written phonetically it's written here it's also written phonetically here it's written written phonetically but here you have a local gram they could write it also with a logogram and look here you have a logogram with a phonetic a phonetic sign used in order to specify clearly its sharum which is recorded here so here you can see very clearly that they were using both logograms and phonograms in cuneiform it's well I try to imagine a kind of example in English the king phonetic rating the King but here this sign is used with a logogrammatic value The King The King here the king so with a logogram and with a specific phonetic complement which is going to tell me okay you have to say king and here I'm asking you so in this case this sign is going to be used with a phonetic value they were doing that also in cuneiform writing okay just for you to understand huh okay let's switch to uh euroglyphic rating they were using logograms uh signs that represent a complete uh an object they were using phonograms and they were using also classifiers or determinated but this is not the point of this uh discussion well I'm not going to talk too much about that but just also Euro gleas are also working the same way as cuniform both logogrammatic and phonetic notations and okay let's uh let's let's say a few words about the Maya rating system used in uh in Mexico so it's also mixed rating system so you are more or less something like 800 signs and some one and 150 they are used as phonograms but most of them they are used as logograms actually and for example the world for Jaguar dalam you can record it just with a logogram you can record it with a logogram but with a phonetic complement is going to tell you be careful the end of the word is ma but also you could write it phonetically but la ma okay so also in Maya script it's mixed you can add both logo grammatic and phonetic notation is it clear yeah well let's go forward now usually we think that the general evolution of writing in the wall is from logogrammatic rating system in the at the end of the fourth millennium BC mixed rating system in the third millennium BC and purely for and the most ancient pure fun pure yeah pure Affinity rating system is only in the middle of the second millennium BC with the proto-synetic alphabets more or less around 1 600 1500 BC so we are considering the story of the writing in the world according to a progressive phonetization where the phonetic aspect of the rating is going to increase progressively that was before the decipherment of linearamite because here if you remember well it is pure phonetic notation as soon as the end of the third millennium BC so all these Progressive monetization Theory does not work because in Iran as soon as 2300 2200 BC they were using a pure phonetic rating system and this breaks completely the theory of the progressive phonetization of rating system in the world um foreign and we are going to talk more about this precisely about this rating system it is an alpha syllabary working theoretically with 77 77 values five vocalic 12 consonant and 60 syllabic values okay here one of the texts was very very very interesting but before it was not very interesting because it was just a fragmented clay artifact and nobody paid attention but look at it one face you have this this signs on the other you have this signs and actually here it's not a text it is an exercise on one side The Scribe or the student right it means nothing in element it means nothing it's not it's not a word it means nothing on the other side he wrote me so it's not uh it's not a world it's an exercise where it was used to uh I don't know to remember to record this signs and here you have a small part of the phonetic grid they were conceiving considering their rating system according to agreed with vocalic science consonant our size and the crossing of this you will get syllabic signs ok and here is the complete back more or less Complete because there are still some signs which uh I did not find yet but more or less you have so the theoretical regular regularized phonetic phonemic grid for the 72 this efforts science which corresponded to 77 767 values so linear alamide writing function as a system according to five vocalic phonemes 12 consonant L ones h k l m n okay and five vowels 12 consonants so 60 syllabic values okay so very logical very precise very it's quite it's just working with 77 signs 77 value values at that time cuneiform and Europe lives they were working with because of the local grams with 200 300 400 500 signs are this my other quarters they did not let me write that in the paper so I was obliged not to ready but I think there might be some consequences on the literacy rate it's much more simple only 77 signs compared to 300 400 500 signs where of course in Mesopotamia in Egypt Wu was able to write only scribes and it was a very highly sophisticated job and you you ascribed from father to son actually well this is don't say that Francois said that it was the more democratic at that time and so no don't say that but that just and hypothesis that the rating system is much more precise and much more simple and I did not say much more advanced huh no anyway and so still I need a version of 10 values I still did not find the sign but I am I hope with more inscriptions we will find them but thanks to the this side I can read 96 percent of the sign which are or display on the 43 inscription currently known so it's almost completely deciphered there are only few signs and actually these four signs are a bit annoying uh well we oh we I still cannot read them but I guess they very probably correspond to one of the stand phonemic values which I still did not find the same corresponding to this value so maybe I would say that maybe this sign corresponds to one of the stand phonemic values so we are in a good track another point I was mentioning uh progress in the knowledge of the elamites or hatantaid language so this is the word king or Lord I was talking about before and before we knew it based on the cuneiform inscription and it was recorded either tempti imti or simti or shame t well first of all we did not understand why sometimes they were recording T C or she why they were these differences but then we saw that in linear am I writing it is recorded exempt are very probably the pronunciation was sent or themed more or less so why exempt in linear alamites and why tempti in cuneiform first of all there is no sign Z in the cuneiform writing used in Iran at that time so the scribes when they whenever they wanted to record the San Jose and they did not have the signs they they were you obliged to use the closest sign at the disposal or Si please explain this stuff to empty second point there is no Continental sign in CUNY from the either the phonographic phonetic side the either vocalic or syllabic so all do you want to write at the end of the world you are obliged to use syllabic sign but where the vocalic value is not going to be pronounced that's why they were obliged to write tame T but actually to record them so before we were thinking that the world for King in alamite was empty and no based on the linear alamitous famine we think that xempt is very probably much closer to the actual pronunciation four thousand years ago and we got aware about the that the cuneiform writing is a bit working like a distal distorting prism prism this is the current the the language but in cuneiform it's a defective rating system and we were thinking that the world was TNT but actually based on linear alamite we can correct the cuneiform reading and come back to the actual pronunciation of the word okay so we made I told you we are still some Pro problems in the translation but in the phonology the way it was really pronounced I think it's a big progress oh let's uh no let's not skip it let's keep it um for some of the signs we can show the evolution in time for example this is sine o this is how it looks like in proto LMI tablets around 3000 BC and all it looks like in the most recent text you can see that more or less it's the same size here it's oh it was written in Western Iran and here oh it was written in eastern Iran so it's very interesting to see that this uh graphic variant they only appeared in Western Iran okay but in eastern Iran they were still using the same sign as the beginning well maybe we saw detail example just for fun I'm showing you that the Sun the same k this is all it looked like in the protolamide tablets and here you can see the evolution of the sign in Western Iran and in eastern Iran okay but I don't want to bother you too much about that and we are out of the 72 signs I could decipher there are more or less 12 signs in blue they are they were used in Western Iran and in red they were used used in eastern Iran so in a way it's a bit like nastar clear and souls Style and based on this for example if I find a description I don't know its provenance if it's using this sign I will I will say hey it's more Eastern lineala nitrating if they are using this sign oh it's more Western so maybe suziana or farce for example this comes from a private collection we don't know where it comes from but based on the graphic variance I think it smells like Eastern Iran it's made like Kerman province okay well and because of that I think that this some of these linear limits inscription actually they are from Cameron and actually they were recording elamite language so now we didn't before we didn't know the uh as a Matthew stopper wrote in 2004 there was the unsettled question of the Eastern extent of the alamide language now I think we can prove quite clearly that ilamai language was at least spoken at least up to Kerman Province and I think that people working in Hindus Pakistan and Hindus with the Indus rating they really should consider elamide language which might have been used also because here in Cameron area we are not so far anymore from the Indus area okay so um well this I said it before let's move forward it's almost Diana keeper so I yeah I just wanted to show you all the diversity of rating system in Iran because it's amazing yeah for example uh people in UK in UK or in France we only use the two rating system Greek alphabet or Latin alphabet where in Iran they use protola May line from Aramaic alphabet Greek alphabet Arabic alphabet arvestik alphabet Arabic alphabet and Latin alphabet so amazing the the diversity of rating system used in Iran for the last five thousand years anyway so I want to skip this part and to move forward so the next Target what's next so the next Target so I'm moving out the topic of the decipherment of linear alamite and I just would like to mention my current work actually and it deals more with protoelemite writing or what I call Early proto-iranian writing so this is why I'm calling why I'm calling them like that protoelemide will be early proto-iranian rating system between 3300 and 3000 BC then there will be a middle phase between 3000 and 2003 100 BC where we don't have many information and then you have the recent phase 2500 1900 BC with the linear alamide rating or the a recent proto-iranian rating system but here I think that as the recent proto-iranian writing had been a version had been deciphered I think that maybe we can use this established knowledge in order to go back to the protoelemi tablets okay I'm just showing you some preliminary preliminary results from the known so now this path is known to the unknown and this is what Cameron was mentioning at the beginning of the the presentation so as you can see I really think that this these are the signs all they look like in protolamide and this is all protolamide tablets and this is all they look like in linear honestly I'm saying that because some people say that this rating system are not related when you look at the shape of the sign honestly it really looks like the same okay and I think here we have the same uh actually it's a bit like in Mesopotamia where we can have follow the evolution the graphic evolution of the sign for example between freefold and BC and 2000 BC and later later on and actually I I really think that in Iran they were much more conservative actually from a graphic point of view because between this uh between this sign and this sign where something like 1000 years and it almost did not change did not evolve so actually I think that they were much more conservative in Iran than in Mesopotamia considering the aspect of the sign so we are around 3500 BC this is the area where they were using the numeral tablet so we are just before the uh Apparition the yes the invention of writing the wall and then around 3300 BC more or less in southern Mesopotamia in Iran but also in Egypt writing appeared in Mesopotamia with the Proto uniform tablets in Iran with the Proto LMA tablets so once again I'm I told you that I considered that they are sisters but many people actually that's the current Trend consider protolamide to be the daughter of Proto uniform but I think it's not correct but anyway some pictures so most of them we have something like 1650 text tablets so it's we're talking about tablets now most of them they were found in Souza at the by French excavation and so most of them they are in the Louvre Museum win so we cannot read them yet but I think we can understand them quite easily they uh they uh they talk about wheat Bali donkeys Golds we have a lot of numerical notations so these are administrative text so these are not Royal inscription like as I told you before for the Lina lamitex we can understand quite clearly the numerical information on them we can guess the the meaning of the object which are counted on the tablets but there are some red section where probably the name of the people involved in the transition in the administrative work these names we cannot read them well let's take an example so it comes from the Memoir de la delegation pairs number 17 it is the 43rd tablet in this book and actually I think we are here we have something like 10 sign sequences very properly recording entrepreneurs names here you have the drawing there the second one okay so you have something one two three four five six ten sign sequences probably recording names and actually most of the sign based on the knowledge of linealamide I can read them this in linear alamite it is o in linealamide so as you can see most of the signs some of them they I think that very probably they were using something like 250 300 300 signs to record the names around 3000 BC and then in the third millennium BC they dropped many of them they sieved them in order to reach a very perfect logical phonetic grid with 77 signs so that's why I can't find some of these linear elements linear alamite sign but some of them I cannot read them because they were dropped in the process of simplification and Russian rationalization in the third millennium BC there is a very interesting phenomenon for example or this is not publisher this is a work in progress but if you look at this sequence this sign is poo and this sign is oh it's red from the right to the left here a I have the impression that many in many cases the syllabic there is a syllabic sign which is going to be I have the impression that they they were recording long vowels or there is father and we know that the word Atta is used in elamide onomastic we have some people their name is so I think there is a very interesting phenomenon of recording long vowel at the end of the names okay and also for each of these 250 signs I'm doing a graphotactic analysis for each of them so I'm trying to check in which context it appears in each time it was used what was the same the sign before what was the sign after so just to to give you an example with this sign so very frequently it is followed by uh the sign I can read as I cannot read it yet this one sometimes it is followed by followed by this sign okay but anyway I don't want to bother you too much about it so uh the point is when we determine the rule of use of this sign very frequently before it you have this resigned and after it you have this signs this is LA foreign I think this is this one is not very interesting because it's probably a logo grammatic notation and actually this one is it smells very good because that could be the notation of a long vowel and if it's the notation of the long vowel so that will mean that this sign is a syllabic sign where there is the vocalic value I don't know what maybe anyway so I want to finish on this with this slide so I presented you a new uh a whole new history of rating system in Iran and I would like you to I also the stuff you could uh made by Passion wonders the small booklet yes this is summarized in this book I think that based on the current knowledge we should consider that in Iran at the same time than in Mesopotamia you are a contemporary writing tradition between 3300 BC from protoelemite to 1900 BC so for 1 400 years in Iran they were using a specific rating system but somebody asked me a question during the break so it seems that happened around 1900 BC why did they stop to use this rating system because actually it was not as successful as the cuniform because cuneiform was used between 3300 BC and the first century 80 and here release were used between the late 4 million NBC and the last inscription where the in the fourth or fifth century 80. so it seems that the Iranian rating was dropped uh much more quickly than the eugliest and cuniform I have two hypotheses to answer this question what happened around 1 900 BC so in Southwestern Iran I think that you have the Mesopotamian influence the Mesopotamian where the very influential you have the Acadian annexation actually they brought with them the cuneiform rating system so how to explain the dismissal of linear alamites in Southwestern Iran I think very probably because of the Mesopotamian influence and they switch from linear LMI to cuneiform and actually there is a very interesting period between 2001 and 1900 BC where elamites scribes they could either decide to use linear alamite or cuneiform and that's this phenomenon which allowed me to decipher linealamide this Geographic situation you remember I I showed you that well I think so Southwestern Iran Mesopotamian in France Southeastern Iran more or less at the same time happen something very big in all East and eastern part of the ancientist at that time in Central Asia in the in this Valley in eastern Iran that's the end of the let's say Urban period Urban civilization and all the cities which were attested at that time more or less around 1900 1800 BC they disappeared and I think that that explained the end of the Indus rating but also of the Eastern variant of the linear lamide in Southeastern era so I think this is more or less all we could explain uh why linear alamites writing was not as successful as cuneiform or heroglyph and I think there is also another reason because it was more simple so maybe we could have guessed it could have spread uh although but contrary to cuneiform linear alamite is only attested in Iran and it only attested to record the alamite language I think that in a way linearamide was victim of this of its own efficiency it was so precise to record the alamite language that they could not use it to record a Cadian Sumerian or other languages and I think that for this reason it never spread out of the Iranian plateau and it stayed in Iran and I think it's one of the weaknesses of this rating system to precise and just adapt it for elements thanks for your attention [Applause] and now it's the time for Q a it will be a short one so if you've got any questions please put your hand up and it's gone please thank you very much please try to be trying to be loud yeah speak loudly yeah it was so precisely because in my naive understanding I just think that a writing system that uses phonetics would be easily adaptable and you know can be you know used in any context so I just want you to understand more uh they are for example in Academia a language they are using phonemes which are not attested in in element language and I think that as this rating system is specifically recording was specifically developed for LMI language and actually recorded very it very precisely I think that one of the reasons which may explain what why never went outside of Iran and actually if cuniform did not exist maybe it could have spread in Mesopotamia and maybe Mesopotamians could have used it but actually the place was already taken by uniform you have my email my um one of the first questions my main question is if um writing system so that they have really mapped out their phonology pretty much perfectly right so you've got five files two 12 content components right I mean in addition a combination of both in order to open to indicate the open syllables to 12 times 560. but first of all me is what I wonder why they bother with the with the syllabic times at all right because I'm essentially what we're faced with would not be a very early Financial very early for me make writing system because very interesting but um so why why my question is how exactly does how exactly does the writing system work their work when you present that little school tablet or whatever whatever it was um on the left you had uh sign of the pure consonant or in Europe oh let's let's come back to the the tablet let's come back sorry wait wait uh where is it it's usually when you're looking for it ah here it is oh yeah yeah so it is the pure Continental signs right and then they wear yes they did yeah between the pure Continental armed yeah yeah congratulations yeah yeah yeah oh no nice uh my question is it should be conceived as proportion today where you had a basic alternative sign that had an unmarked inherent vowel uh if you look at if you look at the at the phonetic grid this what you said just work with between and re and also there is a strange similarity between she and she but otherwise no so I would answer no do the morphological rules of elamite in this house we understand them allow us to connect a semi Prosperity with the word I this is what I proposed to my quotas to maybe consider that exempt could be related to Demi the blazed one the one will receive the grace yeah that will be just an hypothesis but why not time for one more question the last one yeah loudly lovely fantastic and thank you very much for using using a tender to make everything Persian we are uranium we are not Persians I want to introduce I just use the word Iranian for its Geographic value I am not promoting Iranian nationalism I am just using for the geographic value because it's used in the current surface of the Earth which is called nowadays Iran okay Iranian similar to those uh what those words that I've seen some articles they call it Proto proto-lore and is for the area that you are mixing writing and language proto-iranian writing is a rating system and you are talking about law and you are talking about language it's about language if if you are talking about any elamites language influence on the Persian language nowadays that's your question uh no actually I want to to see to what extent is communicate or to some extent is separated from Passion because I think those things you are talking from which point of view language or rating system uh so you are asking me if elamide language influence the Persian language oh it is a different one as I told you elamite is an isolate language and elamites language the last speakers of philamine language there were probably mentioned by Arabic or patient geographers in around more or less 1080 there are some Arabian Arabic writing Arabic Travelers or Persian ones they mentioned the husie people speaking the huzi language in Southwestern Iran it's neither Arabic Persians Syriac or Hebrew is the language of the evil because it's so complicated nobody understands it and we think that these are the last mention of elamite speakers comes from Jose this being said we have an influence from all Persians on elamite language at their Community period at that time elamide language received a huge influence of all Persian language because all Persian was the language of the of the rulers but on the contrary you have almost nothing uh some linguists they all only mentioned that maybe the word dabir dibier it could comes from the perch the elamite word to be which means inscription which actually comes from Acadian inscription except this there is all no influence at all from melamite to the Persian language but we don't know who's the language well that's uh we're not sure if Jose was a lamight but if it is elamite uh honestly whenever you are reading some proper and serious work about any relation between elamite and any other languages there are some people who try to relate it to dravidian languages in India we are not sure there are new theories relating to Caucasian languages we are not sure well the main point is we are not sure we don't know and based on the current knowledge this is an isolate yeah by the way five quarts of in your words I could understand because it was very similar with my mother time yeah but once again that's I know Zana Zana usually when whenever I'm talking about Zana for Iranian I'm saying that it means lady and Iranians they're all falling on the ah but designing means women you know yes but that's not enough in a way all the languages they are related all the languages are related to which extent to which extent I I understand that you said something about zero civilization is that high civilization I don't know the extent of this concept but I think giraffe was more in marashi thank you yeah well thank you so much you're welcome the findings truly fascinating I found personally I hope you guys found it as well on behalf of the organizers and partners of this conference I would like to thank you all for attending you know I would like to thank thank John's college for for providing your place although not the microphone and um I'm in charge for very different Treasurer at cops who you know media you know all involved in Persian wonders and pubs came to University of Persian society and I also would like to thank Dr Petri for giving the introduction so would you join me once more in showing our appreciation for Dr Foster how you doing thank you