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.CAIS ARCHAEOLOGICAL & CULTURAL NEWS OF IRANIAN WORLD© |
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French & US Experts to Decipher Jiroft Inscription
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09 April 2006 |
LONDON,
(CAIS) -- The second inscription that was recently
discovered at the Konar Sandal Ziggurat of the Jiroft ancient site is scheduled
to be deciphered by teams of researchers from the University of Chicago and the
University of Paris.
The
inscription, which is on a brick 11x7 centimetres with a depth of two centimetres,
is more intact than the first inscription discovered during the previous phase
of excavations carried out at the site last year. Only the left corner and two
lines of writing remain of the first inscription.
“Professor
Yusef Majidzadeh has sent pictures of the inscription to the researchers, who
believe the previous inscription was an imperial decree,” Nader Soleimani, a
member of the archaeological team working at Konar Sandal, told the Persian
service of CHN on Saturday.
Due
to the similarities between the words written in Elamite on both inscriptions,
Iranian archaeologists believe that the new inscription is also an imperial
decree. The inscription has five lines, each with about 12 words.
Known
as the “archeologists’ lost heaven”, the ancient site of Jiroft is located
next to the Halil-Rud River in the southern province of Kerman. Many ancient
ruins and artifacts of Jiroft have been excavated by archaeologists, and also by
smugglers, unfortunately, over the past four years.
After
numerous artifacts were discovered in the region, Majidzadeh, the director of
the archaeological team working on Jiroft and the Halil-Rud River cultural area,
named Jiroft the cradle of human art. Many scholars doubted the idea due to the
fact that no writings or architectural structures had yet been discovered at the
site, but the newly discovered writings have caused experts to reconsider their
views on the site.
The
oldest Elamite script, known as Proto-Elamite, first appeared in about 2900 BCE
in Susa, the capital of Elam, in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan.
The Proto-Elamite script is thought to have been developed from an early
Sumerian script.
Old
Elamite was a syllabic script derived from Proto-Elamite and was known to have
been used between about 2250 and 2220 BCE, although it may have been invented at
an earlier date. The Inshushinak inscription, found during an excavation in Susa,
had been written in this type of script.
The
Konar Sandal inscriptions are older than the Inshushinak inscription, thus it
seems that the recently discovered inscriptions link Proto and Old Elamite
scripts.
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"History is the Light on the Path to Future" |
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Encyclopaedia Iranica
The British Institute of Persian Studies "Persepolis Reconstructed"
The British Museum
The Royal Asiatic Society
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