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Document Details : Title: On Newly Proposed Proto-Elamite Sign Values Author(s): KELLEY, Kathryn , BORN, Logan , MONROE, M. Willis , SARKAR, Anoop Journal: Iranica Antiqua Volume: 57 Date: 2022 Pages: 1-25 DOI: 10.2143/IA.57.0.3291506 Abstract : Proto-Elamite (PE) is a mostly undeciphered writing system of late 4th/early 3rd millennium Iran. Although known to be a bookkeeping system that employs many 'object' signs and numerical notations, it has long been hypothesized that the script could contain some signs which functioned as a 'syllabary', which would make PE a very early example of glottographic writing. An article on the decipherment of the much-later Linear Elamite (LE) script (published in 2022 by Desset et al.) proposed a set of correspondences between the LE signs and graphically similar PE signs, suggesting that future work should explore whether LE sign values may be successfully applied to PE signs to yield a greater decipherment. The current article applies the values of Desset et al. to the existing PE corpus to begin to test this theory. Contextual information in PE facilitates examining whether some LE signs and values may be of phylogenetic relationship to PE ones. The article explores the PE signs and sign sequences in question, offering observations on patterns of use with implications for future work towards investigating hypothetical sound values for PE signs. |
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