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Have scholars finally deciphered Linear Elamite?
- c3534l 4y agoSerious question, when can I start learning to read and write Elamite? I'd love to get onto the ground floor of a newly deciphered language.
- lolc 4y agoFor Elamite the language we have sources written in the Akkadian script. There are reasons to believe that the few Linear Elam inscriptions discovered today record the same Elamite language. You'd not be writing in a new language, just in a more ancient script of one of the earliest languages where records have been found!
- singularity2001 4y agoFor Linear Elamite pretty much all that is known is inside the new Desset paper and maybe a handful of others. The corpus is less than 100 texts/fragments!
- aatharuv 4y agoThat's interesting. The decoding of Linear Elamite _may_ help in the decipherment of the Indus Valley Script. One of the theories behind the Indus Valley Civilization, is that they spoke a Dravidian language, related to modern southern India's Dravidian languages. There are also some theories (not generally agreed on), that the Elamite language is related to the Dravidian languages. People also have hypothesized that the IVC script may have at least some relation to Linear Elamite, and if so, it's more of a basis to do generate some hypotheses.
- edgyquant 4y agoThis is my biggest hope. I have a pet conspiracy theory that the Hebrew god was once the same as Brahman and that’s why Jewish (and by extension Christia ) mysticism is often compared to Bramanist theology. The “oneness of god” is one direction this ancient “brahamnism” went while the modern religion is the opposite. My hope is that deciphering the Indus Valley civilization will allow us to extract a more ancient form of this religion from comparing the two.
- selimthegrim 4y agoHow is it that IVC is assumed to practice Vedic religions? There were Indo-Aryans in the Middle East like the Mitanni, sure
- edgyquant 4y agoThe idea is that the cult that became Judaism has a shared history with Vedic, or pre-Vedic, religions. Not that ancient Israelites actually believed in that religion.
- Calavar 4y agoI think what they're getting at is that as best we know, Vedic religions came to India with the Indo-Aryan migration. So the pre-Vedic religions of the Indus Valley Civilization are unlikely to have had any notion of a Vedic concept like brahman.
- ncmncm 4y agoRight. There is basically no possibility at all that IVC was Vedic. Vedic was pastoral and martial, IVC sedentary, farming, and wholly non-martial. BTW, "IVC" is problematic, because it extended hundreds of km east well across the subcontinent. The Hindi majority in that part of its range would prefer it not.
- selimthegrim 4y agoWhy not, don’t they want to claim it?
- ncmncm 4y agoOnly if they could make it Vedic.
- xhevahir 4y agoIsrael's religion began its transition to monotheism a very long time after the period when this script was in use. Anyway, I think your approach sounds better suited to languages than to religions.
- wl 4y agoThe authors of the paper in question take issue with this article: https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/the-decipherment-of-linear-elamite-writing-and-a-curious-way-of-doing-journalism-a-rejoinder-to-andrew-lawler-and-the-smithsonian-magazine-a-guest-post-by-gianni-marchesi/ https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/the-deci...
- emmelaich 4y agoExcerpt: >As far as my co-authors and I are aware, our ZA paper—which underwent a double-blind peer review—has only received positive reactions. Moreover, the incontrovertible facts and solid arguments presented in support of the decipherment are such that I would not expect there to be much disagreement about our conclusions
- wl 4y agoYou cut off right before it got interesting. It's more than scholars chafing at the notion that their work might be flawed. It's that nobody other than the reviewers had grappled with the paper yet, making this talk of debate entirely manufactured. > That said, the article in question has only just appeared and begun circulating in the scholarly community. It is too soon for it to have generated the kind of scholarly debate Lawler suggests it has.
- adastra22 4y agoYeah, I had the pleasure of publishing a controversial paper at a conference once. The paper wasn't generally available until the day I presented, and due to IP prior art concerns I didn't circulate it prior to the event. So I personally knew everyone who had read/reviewed it prior to publication. Yet somehow, in the days prior to publication everyone who was anyone in this niche industry had an opinion on this paper, which I KNEW they hadn't read. And most of the "opinions" published were based on their wildly incorrect assumptions of what my work was based on just the abstract, which was on the conference schedule. I would have assumed that prominent, respected researchers in a field would hold off judgement and getting quotes in media until they had at least had the chance to read the freaking paper. Or at least qualify their statements as such. But nope, I sure was naïve to think so.
- shadowofneptune 4y ago> Cuneiform and hieroglyphics use symbols denoting both sounds and logograms. But Desset argues that Linear Elamite takes an approach more like the modern alphabet. He concludes that the script draws solely on syllables, making it the oldest known writing system to do so. “If the recent decipherment is in all details correct,” notes Krebernik, “the system would indeed be innovative, and similar to the later creation of the alphabet.” The first fully formed, phonetic alphabet is thought to have come into use among Phoenician traders around 1100 B.C.E. The article exaggerates how unique a syllabary is. The writing system of Akkad and Babylon was almost entirely syllabic, and grew in parallel with Sumerian: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language
- DonaldFisk 4y agoThe Phoenicians alphabet (actually an abjad) lacked vowels. Vowels were first added in Greek.
- edgyquant 4y agoAs does Hebrew, which is why we don’t technically know how YHWH is pronounced
- ncmncm 4y agoYeah, syllabaries are absolutely the norm, and usual end state for a script, from Japan to Ireland. The Greek innovation of splitting syllables into diphthongs was revolutionary. Still, one syllabary had to be first. Logograms evaporate when you want to write foreign names and words.
- biorach 4y ago> syllabaries are absolutely the norm, and usual end state for a script This is entirely unsupported by evidence. There are a varieties of approaches to writing systems around the world - syllabaries are only one. > Japan to Ireland Japan, yes. Ireland, no - there is no record of a syllabary in use there.
- lolc 4y agoWe've put together an online corpus of Linear Elamite: https://center-for-decipherment.ch/tool/#elam https://center-for-decipherment.ch/tool/#elam The Linear Elamite script has already seen claims of decipherment. But most of it was just circular conjectures. Due to the small corpus, progress is slow and claims rest on little evidence. Desset did contribute a lot to what little is accepted today. Still evaluating the new publication of Desset et al. If it turns out to be solid, we'll include the new sound values they propose.
- cwillu 4y agoAmbiguous use of the token “sound” on line 2; first used on line 2.
- lolc 4y agoHaha, indeed! Fixed.
- ur-whale 4y agoAs per https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/the-decipherment-of-linear-elamite-writing-and-a-curious-way-of-doing-journalism-a-rejoinder-to-andrew-lawler-and-the-smithsonian-magazine-a-guest-post-by-gianni-marchesi/ https://zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/the-deci... Desset is not the main contributor, but one among equals. You might want to avoid making the same mistake the Smithsonian journalist did.
- lolc 4y agoDesset has contributed a lot in the past. That's where I used the singular.
- mcint 4y agoTo whomever retitled this: thank you. I'm now interested in this post, whereas the earlier title read as generic, un[der]informed clickbait; too much interpretation for the reader, coddling too much. I didn't know of Linear Elamite before, but the language's name evokes the project of studying ancient history, as does the domain.
- singularity2001 4y agoMost frustratingly the underlying paper is still not available for free: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/za-2022-0003/html https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/za-2022-0003/... I considered investing the $30 but was advised against "feeding the dragon"
- Hitton 4y agoAnd then there is Sci-Hub.
- singularity2001 4y agoOh, how did I overlook that before? Thanks. https://www.sci-hub.ru/10.1515/za-2022-0003 https://www.sci-hub.ru/10.1515/za-2022-0003
- singularity2001 4y agoEarlier versions of this paper have been explained on youtube by the main author himself: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=desset+elamite https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=desset+elamite Very fascinating and probably sound.