The Disappearance of Writing Systems - Perspectives on Literacy and Communication - John Baines
The Obsolescence and Demise of Cuneiform Writing in Elam
The Disappearance of Writing Systems - Perspectives on Literacy and Communication - John Baines
Jeremy Black [+]
University of Oxford
Jeremy Black† (1951–2004), who died entirely unexpectedly a month after the conference at which he presented his fully composed chapter for this book as a paper, was Lecturer in Akkadian in the University of Oxford. His primary research was on Sumerian literature, in which he published Reading Sumerian Poetry (1998) while developing the major collaborative project, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk). That project also yielded a volume of translations, The Literature of Ancient Sumer (2004), by Jeremy Black, Graham Cunningham, Eleanor Robson, and Gábor Zólyomi. Until 1988 Jeremy Black was the director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq. He was the author of works on Sumerian grammar and editions of cuneiform texts. The present volume is dedicated to his memory.
Description
Elam is the historical name for the region of south-western Iran closest to Iraq, covering both the mountainous area and the plain. It was anciently the region of the Elamite civilization, with its own language, which was written in cuneiform script for almost 2000 years. Uniquely, three distinct cuneiform writing systems were used in south-western Iran in ancient times: Mesopotamian cuneiform, writing various phases of Akkadian language; the adaptation derived from that used to write Elamite; and Old Persian cuneiform, invented to write this early Indo-European language.