TEHRAN – French archaeologist François Desset has decoded the 4,000-year-old Linear Elamite writing system from ancient Iran, unlocking one of the last undeciphered scripts of the ancient Near East after years of research.

Desset, a researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium, said his breakthrough came after studying newly accessible inscriptions on ancient silver vases from the Mahboubian Collection in London. The additional texts enabled him to identify recurring royal names that provided the key to understanding the script, according to France 24.

Linear Elamite, a writing system consisting of 77 geometric signs, was used during the Bronze Age by the Elamite civilization, which flourished in what is now southwestern Iran. The script was first rediscovered in 1903 during French archaeological excavations at the ancient city of Susa but remained undeciphered for more than a century because of the limited number of surviving inscriptions.

Desset said his interest in the script began in 2006 while participating in excavations in southern Iran, where Linear Elamite tablets were unearthed. He spent years attempting to decipher the inscriptions before gaining access to ten previously unavailable texts that proved decisive.

"The key to deciphering a script, as is so often the case, lies in proper names: names of places, gods, kings," Desset said.

He said the breakthrough came after identifying the name of the Elamite ruler Shilhaha, who reigned around 1950 BC. A repeated sequence of symbols matched the repeated ending of the ruler's name, allowing him to assign phonetic values to several signs and gradually decipher the script.

The achievement has drawn comparisons with Jean-François Champollion, the French scholar who deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early nineteenth century using royal names such as Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Desset said Shilhaha served as his equivalent of Champollion's royal inscriptions.

Following the breakthrough, Desset has been able to study and interpret 45 Linear Elamite inscriptions. He now plans to focus on the even older Proto-Elamite script, one of the earliest known writing systems, which remains largely undeciphered.

The Elamite civilization emerged during the early urbanization of the ancient Near East around the fourth millennium BC. Centered initially in Anshan and later in Susa, Elam occupied much of present-day Khuzestan and Ilam provinces in Iran, extending into parts of modern-day southern Iraq. Its language, considered unrelated to any other known language family, continued to be used in official administration during the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Despite ongoing regional tensions, Desset expressed hope that his research would contribute to preserving Iran's cultural heritage.

"I hope that this work will have a positive impact on Iranian culture and identity once things have returned to normal," he said.

AM