François Desset deciphers 4,000-year-old Linear Elamite script

French archaeologist François Desset of the Laboratoire Archéorient in Lyon, affiliated with the University of Tehran, has deciphered Linear Elamite, a writing system used in the ancient kingdom of Elam on the Iranian plateau between the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE. The script, read right-to-left and top-to-bottom, was first discovered on clay tablets in Susa, southwestern Iran, in 1901. Desset's decade-long research began with studying silver gunagi vessels from the Mahboubian collection in London, which bore repetitive royal inscriptions. His findings reveal that Linear Elamite and proto-Elamite are the same script at different historical stages, not independent systems. Moreover, proto-Elamite (c. 3300–2900 BCE) was contemporary with Mesopotamian proto-cuneiform, challenging the notion that writing originated solely in Mesopotamia. The results are to be published in the German journal Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie. Desset presented preliminary findings in a November 2020 online seminar at the University of Padua, organized with Professor Massimo Vidale. The decipherment provides new insights into ancient Iran and the evolution of writing. The last undeciphered scripts remain Linear A of Crete and the Indus Valley script.