There has been a lot of publicity over the last year or so about the value of various forms of imaging for improving an understanding of artefacts and scripts. At the Ashmolean in Oxford, UK, they have used Reflectance Transformation Imaging System, which uses a combination of computer processing and lighting to gather details on proto-Elamite object surfaces that are not visible to the unaided human eye. Proto-Elamite was a writing system borrowed from Mesopotamian, but with an entire new set of symbols used to represent individual words. The article, on the BBC website, also provides a useful description of the background to the society that developed the script.
The world’s oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.
This international research project is already casting light on a lost bronze age middle eastern society where enslaved workers lived on rations close to the starvation level.
“I think we are finally on the point of making a breakthrough,” says Jacob Dahl, fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford and director of the Ancient World Research Cluster.
Dr Dahl’s secret weapon is being able to see this writing more clearly than ever before.
In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilisations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out light.
This device, part sci-fi, part-DIY, is providing the most detailed and high quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets.
More info: http://news.discovery.com/history/oldest-writing-121023.html
Comment by John D. — October 25, 2012 @ 9:36 pm
Proto-Elamite seems unrelated to Linear Elamite, and it is quite possible that the term is a misnomer. There also tends to be a bias against the idea that Susa was crucial to the development of writing (if not a bias against the idea, that Susa was just a colony of Uruk). Proto-Elamite dates to only 100 years after Sumerian. Such a difference is close enough to easily be explained by contamination, or limited sampling, and dating methods with enough resolution to distinguish a couple hundred years, are not yet available. And it is difficult to understand, why a civilization (Susa) would not just adopt the Sumerian script, and decide to re-invent writing, so to speak. For that reason alone, it may be more likely that the development of writing occured in Susa, and at some early phase of it’s development, the ideographical form of writing made it’s way to Sumer. We have evidence for the development of writing in Susa: The earliest proto-elamite is ideagraphical, and almost immediately afterwards, appears to take it’s syllabic form. One would expect if the relationship was reverse, if writing was invented in ‘Sumer’ (assuming Susa wasn’t part of Sumer), than the transition to syllabic form would not occur so shortly afterwards – especially among a random, preliterate, population. But if we assume that Susanian’s were experimenting with writing, than the transition can be explained a lot easier. It is also important to note that the oldest counting tokens, and cylindrical seals, which were crucial to the development of writing, were found at Susa. Susa did not ‘borrow’ the concept of writing. Instead it had an important role in the evolution and emergence of writing through Mesopatamia.
Comment by ztech — April 14, 2013 @ 8:37 am