a Frenchman manages to decipher a 4400-year-old writing

The news should delight many archaeologists and historians, as it could call into question several certainties on the very origin of writing. The French archaeologist François Desset, who works at the Archéorient Laboratory in Lyon, announced on November 27 that he had succeeded in deciphering inscriptions that are 4,400 years old, reports the Sciences et Avenir website.

“Writing did not first appear in Mesopotamia”

Affiliated with the University of Tehran, François Desset for the first time deciphered inscriptions in linear Elamite, a writing system used by the Elamites who then populated Iran more than 4000 years ago. The first examples of writing known to date came from Mesopotamia (which corresponds to current Iraq). Thanks to this deciphering of linear Elamite, the archaeologist has thus confirmed that a parallel writing system was also created in Iran, long before. “The two writings are not mother and daughter, they are sisters”, explained François Desset, during a presentation of his work at the University of Padua, in Italy.

“The same writing which has been subjected to historical evolution”

“We find in fact that around 2300 BC, a parallel writing system existed in Iran, and that its oldest version – called Proto-Elamite writing, (3300 BC- 2900 BC) . JC) – went as far back in time as the first Mesopotamian cuneiform texts! ” specifies François Desset. “Also, I can now say that writing did not first appear in Mesopotamia and then later in Iran: these two systems, the Mesopotamian proto-cuneiform and the Iranian proto-Elamite, were in fact contemporary. ! There was not a mother script of which the proto-Elamite would be the daughter, there were two sister scripts. On the other hand, in Iran, there were not two systems of writing either. independent as scholars thought until then, with Proto-Elamite on one side and Linear Elamite on the other, but the same writing which has been subject to historical evolution and has been transcribed with variations over the course of two distinct periods “he continues in Sciences et Avenir.