Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to AD 330. Elamite is generally thought to have no demonstrable relatives and is usually considered a language isolate. The lack of established relatives makes its interpretation difficult.
A sizeable number of Elamite lexemes are known from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions – trilingual inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire, in which Elamite was written using Elamite cuneiform (circa 5th century BC), which is fully deciphered. An important dictionary of the Elamite language, the Elamisches Wörterbuch was published in 1987 by W. Hinz and H. Koch. The Linear Elamite script however, one of the scripts used to write the Elamite language , had remained elusive until the 2010s. in
History
The history of Elamite is periodised as follows:
Old Elamite (c. 2600–1500 BC) Middle Elamite (c. 1500–1000 BC) Neo-Elamite (1000–550 BC) Achaemenid Elamite (550–330 BC) Late Elamite? Khuzi? (Unknown – AD 1000)
Middle Elamite is considered the "classical" period of Elamite. The best-attested variety is Achaemenid Elamite, which was widely used by the Achaemenid Empire for official inscriptions as well as administrative records and displays significant Old Persian influence.
Persepolis Administrative Archives were found at Persepolis in the 1930s, and they are mostly in Elamite; the remains of more than 10,000 of these cuneiform documents have been uncovered. In comparison, Aramaic is represented by only 1,000 or so original records.Persepolis Fortification Archive. Oriental Institute – The University of Chicago These documents represent administrative activity and data flow in Persepolis over more than fifty consecutive years (509 to 457 BC).
Documents from the Old Elamite and early Neo-Elamite stages are relatively scarce. Neo-Elamite is a transitional form in its structure between Middle and Achaemenid Elamite.
The Elamite language may have remained in widespread use after the Achaemenid period. Several rulers of Elymais bore the Elamite name Kamnaskires in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The Acts of the Apostles (c. AD 80–90) mentions the language as if it was still current. There are no later direct references, but Elamite may be the local language in which, according to the Talmud, the Book of Esther was recited annually to the Jews of Susa in the Sasanian Empire (224–642).
Between the 8th and 13th centuries AD, various Arabic authors refer to a language called Khūzī or Khūz spoken in Khuzistan, which was unlike any other language known to those writers. It is possible that it was "a late variant of Elamite". in The last original report on the Khūz language was written circa 988 by al-Maqdisi, characterizing the Khuzi as bilingual in Arabic and Persian but also speaking an "incomprehensible" language in Ramhormoz. The city had recently become prosperous again after the foundation of a market when it received an influx of foreigners and being a Khuzi was stigmatized at the time. The language probably went extinct in the 11th century. Later authors only mention the language when citing previous work.
Study The study of Elamite language goes back to the first publications of Achaemenid royal inscriptions in Europe in the first half of the 19th century AD. A great step forward was the publication of the Elamite version of the Bisutun Inscription in the name of Darius I, entrusted by Henry Rawlinson to Edwin Norris and appeared in 1855. At that time, Elamite was believed to be Scythian, whose Indo-European affiliation was not yet established. The first grammar was published by Jules Oppert in 1879. The first to use the glottonym Elamite is considered to be Archibald Henry Sayce in 1874, though already in 1850 Isidore Löwenstern advanced this identification. The publication of pre-Achaemenid inscriptions from Susa is due along the first three decades of the 20th century by father Vincent Scheil. Then in 1933 the Persepolis Fortification Tablets were discovered, being the first administrative corpus in this language, even if published by Richard T. Hallock much later (1969). Another administrative corpus was discovered in the 1970s at Tall-i Malyan, the ancient city of Anshan, and published in 1984 by Matthew W. Stolper. In the meantime (1967), the Middle Elamite inscriptions from Chogha Zanbil were published by father Marie-Joseph Steve. In the fourth quarter of the 20th century the French school was led by François Vallat, with relevant studies by Françoise Grillot(-Susini) and Florence Malbran-Labat, while the American school of scholars, inaugurated by George G. Cameron and Herbert H. Paper, focused on the administrative corpora with Stolper. Elamite studies have been revived in the 2000s by Wouter F.M. Henkelman with several contributions and a monograph focused on the Persepolis Fortification tablets. Elamite language is currently taught in three universities in Europe, by Henkelman at the École pratique des hautes études, Gian Pietro Basello at the University of Naples "L'Orientale" and Jan Tavernier at the UCLouvain.
Classification Elamite is regarded by the vast majority of linguists as a language isolate, as it has no demonstrable relationship to the neighbouring Semitic languages, Indo-European languages, or to Sumerian, despite having adopted the Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform script.
An Elamo-Dravidian family connecting Elamite with the Brahui language of Pakistan and Dravidian languages of India was suggested in 1967 by Igor M. Diakonoff and later, in 1974, defended by David McAlpin and others. In 2012, Southworth proposed that Elamite forms the "Zagrosian family" along with Brahui and, further down the cladogram, the remaining Dravidian languages; this family would have originated in Southwest Asia (southern Iran) and was widely distributed in South Asia and parts of eastern West Asia before the Indo-Aryan migration. Recent discoveries regarding early population migration based on ancient DNA analysis have revived interest in the possible connection between proto-Elamite and proto-Dravidian.: I admit that this [reconstruction] is somewhat farfetched. but so is a number of McAlpin's reconstructions. [...] There is no obvious systematic relationship between the morphologies of Elamite and Dravidian, apparent at first sight. Only after a hypothetical reinterpretation, three morphological patterns emerge as cognate systems: the basic cases, the personal pronouns, and the appellative endings. [...] I am also convinced that much additional work is to be done and many changes will be made to remove the genetic cognation in question from the realm of hypothesis and establish it as a fact acceptable to all.: Many of the rules formulated by McAlpin lack intrinsic phonetic/phonological motivation and appear ad hoc, invented to fit the proposed correspondences: e.g. Proto-Elamo-Dravidian *i, *e > Ø Elamite, when followed by t, n, which are again followed by a; but these remain undisturbed in Dravidian (1974: 93). How does a language develop that kind of sound change? This rule was dropped a few years later, because the etymologies were abandoned (see 1979: 184). [...] We need more cognates of an atypical kind to rule out the possibility of chance. A detailed reassessment of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis by Pedron in 2023 reaffirmed the majority position that it was without good evidence, noting that the words and morphemes McAlpin identified as cognates tended either to not be proven to share a meaning or to be extremely simple syllables that could easily be chance resemblances, especially given the amount of time involved.
Václav Blažek proposed a relation with the Semitic languages.
In 2002 George Starostin published a lexicostatistic analysis finding Elamite to be approximately equidistant from Nostratic and Semitic.
None of these ideas have been accepted by mainstream historical linguists.
Phonology Because of the limitations of the language's scripts, its phonology is not well understood.
Its consonants included at least stops , and , sibilants , and (with an uncertain pronunciation), nasals and , liquids and and fricative , which was lost in late Neo-Elamite. Some peculiarities of the spelling have been interpreted as suggesting that there was a contrast between two series of stops (, , as opposed to , , ), but in general, such a distinction was not consistently indicated by written Elamite.
Elamite had at least the vowels , , and and may also have had , which was not generally expressed unambiguously.
Roots were generally CV, (C)VC, (C)VCV or, more rarely, CVCCV (the first C was usually a nasal).
Desset's reconstruction Below is phonological system interpretation suggested by Desset.
Vowels FrontBackClose Mid Open Probably there were also long vowels and diphthongs, though written occurrences are rare.
Consonants Transcription is given in brackets ⟨⟩, while non-verified consonants are in parentheses (). +Consonant phonemes of Elamite LabialAlveolarPostalveolarVelarNasal Plosive () () ()Affricate? ⟨z⟩1Fricative ⟨s⟩ ⟨š⟩ ⟨h⟩2Approximant ()Rhotic⟨r⟩Lateral Either or . Described as velar fricative by Desset. Two identified ⟨h⟩ signs possibly expressed two different /h/ phonemes.
Writing system
The following scripts are known or assumed to have encoded Elamite: Proto-Elamite script is the oldest known writing system from Iran. It was used during a brief period of time (c. 3100–2900 BC); clay tablets with Proto-Elamite writing have been found at different sites across Iran. It is thought to have developed from early cuneiform (proto-cuneiform) and consists of more than 1,000 signs. It is thought to be largely logographic and is not deciphered. Linear Elamite is attested in a few monumental inscriptions. It has been described either as a syllabic or logosyllabic writing system. At least part of the script has been deciphered and it has been argued to have developed from Proto-Elamite, although the exact nature of the relationship between the two is disputed (see the main article). Linear Elamite was used for a very brief period of time during the last quarter of the third millennium BC.
Later, Elamite cuneiform, adapted from Akkadian cuneiform, was used from c. 2500 BC on. Elamite cuneiform was largely a syllabary of some 130 glyphs at any one time and retained only a few logograms from Akkadian but, over time, the number of logograms increased. The complete corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of about 20,000 tablets and fragments. The majority belong to the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic records.
Typology Elamite is an agglutinative language, and its grammar was characterized by an extensive and pervasive nominal class system. Animate nouns have separate markers for first, second and third person. It can be said to display a kind of Suffixaufnahme in that the nominal class markers of the head are also attached to any modifiers, including adjectives, noun adjuncts, possessor nouns and even entire clauses.
Morphology Though an agglutinative language, Elamite has fewer morphemes per word than, for example, Sumerian or Hurrian and Urartian. It is mostly suffixing.
Nouns The Elamite nominal system is thoroughly pervaded by a noun class distinction, which combines a gender distinction between animate and inanimate with a personal class distinction, corresponding to the three persons of verbal inflection (first, second, third, plural). The suffixes that express that system are as follows: Animate: 1st person singular: -k 2nd person singular: -t 3rd person singular: -r or -Ø 3rd person plural: -p
Inanimate: -∅, -me, -n, -tApart from the productive use of -me to form abstract nouns, the meaning (if any) of the difference between the various inanimate suffixes is unclear.