Bunyān-i hunar; justārhā-yi mūzah/dārī, marimmat, bāstānshināsī va tārīkh-i hunar (Foundation of Art; Studies of Museums, Conservation, Archeology and Art History)

Description of the Proto Elamite Writing and Introduction to the Tablet Found in the Dafineh Museum Collection

10.22034/ciom.2025.2064483.1044
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Serial Number 8
Autumn 2025
Pages 82-101
Bunyān-i hunar; justārhā-yi mūzah/dārī, marimmat, bāstānshināsī va tārīkh-i hunar (Foundation of Art; Studies of Museums, Conservation, Archeology and Art History)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Hasan Afshari 1
alireza rostami 2

1 عضو کرسی یونسکو در مخاطرات طبیعی

2 مؤسسه فرهنگی موزه های بنیاد

Abstract
Abstract
With the onset of the Neolithic period, interregional exchanges began to develop, leading to the creation of various management systems for recording and accounting these transactions. These exchanges reached their peak during the Chalcolithic period, during which certain social groups gained greater wealth and power compared to other regional inhabitants, resulting in the emergence of social hierarchies and the formation of the first states. By the end of the Chalcolithic period, a cultural phase emerged in the Iranian Plateau, now known as the Proto Elamite period.    This era represents a pivotal stage in the history of the plateau’s inhabitants.
      Spanning nearly three centuries, this period witnessed unprecedented levels of economic and commercial exchanges. Human societies, building on the experiences of their predecessors, were able to invent the first writing system concurrently with the Mesopotamians to record and manage administrative and commercial affairs. Scholars consider writing as a fundamental pillar in the formation of civilizations and emphasize its significance in the chronological classification of prehistoric and historical periods.
       The Proto Elamite script was based on an administrative system whose roots trace back to the Neolithic period. The earliest clay tablets recorded managerial documents, including inventories of grain, livestock, laborers, and wage payments. These documents held significant value and importance for the inhabitants of the Iranian Plateau. The existence of Proto Elamite clay tablets indicates the region’s pioneering role in the development of writing and early civilizations worldwide.
       In this study, through fieldwork and library research, we aim to examine and describe the Proto Elamite clay tablets preserved in the Define Museums’ collections. Unfortunately, due to physical damage and breakage, these tablets are not fully legible, and only a few numerical and ideographic signs remain visible. However, since this writing system was uniformly used across most parts of the Iranian Plateau with consistent structure and rules, it is possible to reconstruct some of the broken sections. Ultimately, these clay tablets can be regarded as representative artifacts of the administrative complexities developed over millennia in the prehistoric societies of the Iranian Plateau, now preserved in the Define Museums’ collections.
 
 
Introduction
The emergence of writing can be considered one of the most significant civilizational developments, as the invention of writing is among the essential features in the formation of civilization. About 5,500 years ago, this innovation may be described as a cultural revolution whose true value had not yet fully manifested, and its civilizational importance had not reached complete expression. Initially, only a limited number of individuals employed writing for the management and control of warehouses and storerooms, regarding this knowledge as valuable primarily from their own perspective. However, the continued and widespread use of writing gradually enhanced its importance. Some scholars believe that writing was invented in the fourth millennium BCE, contemporaneous with the Uruk culture. During this period—the era of extensive interactions across the ancient Near East—small political units in southern and northern Mesopotamia, southeastern Anatolia, and the western Iranian Plateau were interconnected (Matthews, 2014: 134). At the same time, very large settlements were emerging in southern Mesopotamia, which may rightly be regarded as the world’s first cities. For example, the city of Uruk reached an area of approximately 230 hectares (Nissen, 2013: 82). By contrast, the size of settlements in the Khuzestan plain was significantly smaller than Uruk (Johnson, 1973: 49). Based on this evidence, the invention of writing has often been associated with the rise of large cities in southern Mesopotamia. Yet the reality is that the origins of writing are older than the emergence of the first cities and can be traced back to the Neolithic period. The earliest evidence may be found at sites such as Sheikh-e Abad (Mohammadi-Far et al., 2011: 21), Ganj Dareh (Schmandt-Besserat, 1992: 20), and Tepe Asiab (Schmandt-Besserat, 1981: 24) on the Iranian Plateau.
       With the advent of urbanization, the expansion of regional and interregional relations, and the diversification of occupations, earlier managerial and accounting practices were no longer sufficient to address the needs of a sophisticated and evolving society (AL gaze, 2008). Consequently, for the first time, two relatively similar writing systems developed in southern Mesopotamia and on the Iranian Plateau (Desset, 2016). Proto-Elamite writing is regarded as one of the world’s earliest syllabic and ideographic scripts (Afshari & Shadmehr, 2022). To date, nearly 1,800 proto-Elamite tablets have been legally recovered through archaeological excavations (WWW.CDLI). Most of these are housed in the Louvre Museum (Dahl, 2019), the National Museum of Iran (Afshari & Nekouei, 2022), the Shush Museum, and the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, USA (WWW.CDLI). More recently, additional proto-Elamite tablets have been published from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the University of São Paulo Museum in Brazil, the Church of Jerusalem Museum, and the Art Collection of Columbia University, which likely originated from illicit excavations in the past. In recent years, a proto-Elamite tablet has also been displayed in the Treasury Museums, offering valuable evidence for the emergence of civilizational features on the Iranian Plateau.
 
Methodology
Among the most significant prehistoric artifacts within the Treasury Museums collection—specifically in the Treasury building and coin section—is a proto-Elamite tablet. Unfortunately, the upper half of the tablet had broken in antiquity, as evidenced by the heavy deposits visible along the fracture. Based on its features, the tablet was inscribed in horizontal lines from top to bottom. Two lines are visible on the left side, while the right half bears an impressed seal, although the seal impression is no longer clearly discernible. Since the final sign of the first line is M288, it is highly probable that the content of this tablet concerned the calculation of wages or the distribution of rations to workers (Fig. 6). Two numerical systems are represented on the tablet.
       In the first line, before the sign M288, the sexagesimal or bisexagesimal counting system was used, likely denoting either the number of workers or the amount of labor recorded. Following the sign M288, the volumetric numerical system appears, which was commonly employed for recording grain and rations. Given the fracture in the tablet, it is possible that another sign or numerical system was originally present between these two sequences, but no trace remains today (Fig. 7). The transliteration of the preserved portion of the tablet is as follows:
 
Conclusion
The Proto-Elamite period represents a pivotal stage in the history of the Iranian Plateau, contemporaneous with the emergence of writing in Mesopotamia. During this era, as in its western counterparts (Uruk and Jemdet Nasr), significant advances were made in administrative management compared to earlier periods, particularly in the documentation of records, inventory control, calculation and payment of workers’ wages, and activities related to animal husbandry, herding, agriculture, and the collection and distribution of grain. These developments ultimately gave rise to one of the world’s earliest writing systems. This system, characterized by ideographic signs likely derived from the clay tokens of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, along with a number of syllabic elements, took shape across a vast and unified region of the Iranian Plateau.
       Archaeological excavations at sites such as Susa and Tall-e Geser in Khuzestan, Malyan in Fars, Sefalin in the Tehran Plain, Ozbaki in the Alborz Plain, Sialk in Kashan (Isfahan Province), Tepe Yahya in Kerman, and Shahr-i Sokhta in Sistan and Baluchestan have yielded examples of this script, many of which are now displayed in museums around the world. The clay tablet preserved in the Treasury Museum belongs to this same cultural achievement, representing some of the earliest human attempts at developing writing and civilization. Unfortunately, the upper half of the tablet has been lost due to breakage, leaving only the lower portion intact. It appears that the tablet contained two inscribed lines on the left side and employed two numerical systems: the sexagesimal/bisexagesimal system and the volumetric system. Based on the use of the ideogram M288, it can be inferred that the tablet likely recorded wage payments and rations, probably in the form of grain. In conclusion, despite its small size and damaged condition, the tablet housed in the Treasury Museum constitutes an important document reflecting the managerial advancements and the growing complexity of administrative practices among the inhabitants of the Iranian Plateau around 3300–3000 BCE.

Keywords

Proto Elamite, writing system, tablet, administrative system, Iranian Plateau
Subjects
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