Proto-Elamite Administrative Tablets
composition: secure
witness: in situ Proto-Elamite tablet archives from Susa and other Iranian sites, c. 3100-2900 BC
Proto-Elamite administrators at Susa and other Iranian centers recorded grain, livestock, and institutional transactions in a numerical and sign system that is partly legible today even though the underlying language it encoded remains unknown.
- Proto-Elamite is a modern archaeological label, not proof of continuity with the later Elamite language
- numerical and metrological systems shared with contemporary Uruk; nonnumerical signs mostly undeciphered
- administrators recorded grain, livestock, labor, and institutional allocations at Susa and other Iranian centers
- partly legible, not wholly unreadable: numbers, document formats, and some recurring signs are understood
Some 1,600 clay tablets and fragments from Susa and other Iranian centers, written in the sign system modern scholars call Proto-Elamite, a purely archaeological label that does not imply the underlying language was later Elamite. Administrators used it to track grain, livestock, labor, offices, and institutional allocations, largely adopting the numerical and metrological conventions already in use at contemporary Uruk while pairing them with an independent, still mostly undeciphered set of nonnumerical signs. Numbers, units of measure, document layouts, and a number of recurring signs for commodities and titles are reasonably well understood; most other signs, and the spoken language behind them, are not. The corpus is among the largest bodies of early administrative writing outside Mesopotamia and remains partly, not wholly, unreadable.
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