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Silver cup from Marvdasht, Fars, with Linear-Elamite inscription on it. 3rd Millennium BC. National Museum of Iran.

Teppe Sialk is one of the remaining proto-elamite ruins in Iran. The ruins date back to the 6th millenia BCE at the earliest.

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The Proto-Elamite period is the time of ca. 3200 BC to 2700 BC when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period.

The Proto-Elamite script is an Early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for the ancient Elamite language before the introduction of Elamite Cuneiform.

Besides Susa important Proto-Elamite site is Teppe Sialk, where the only remaining Proto-Elamite ziggurat is still seen. Texts in the undeciphered Proto-Elamite script found in Susa are dated to this period. It is thought that the Proto-Elamites were in fact Elamites (Elamite speakers) because of the many cultural similarities (for example the building of the ziggurats) and because no large scale migration to this area seems to have occurred between the Proto-Elamite period and the later Elamite. But because their script is yet to be deciphered this theory remains uncertain.

Some anthropologists such as John Alden maintain that Proto-Elamite influence grew rapidly at the end of the 4th millennium BC and declined equally rapidly with the establishment of maritime trade in the Persian Gulf several centuries later.

Proto-elamite pottery dating back to the last half of the 5th millennium BC has been found in Sialk, where proto-elamite writing, the first form of writing in Iran, has been found on tablets of this date. The first cylinder seals come from the Proto-Elamite period, as well. [1]

The first indigenous writing system from Iran is called Proto-Elamite, it was long thought of as a precursor to a (hypothetical) indigenous Elamite writing system. Proto-Elamite, as well as Linear Elamite, remains largely un-deciphered. At present it is idle speculation to postulate a relationship between the two writing systems.

A few Proto-Elamite signs are obvious loans from the slightly older proto-cuneiform (Late Uruk) tablets of Mesopotamia, or perhaps more correctly share a common origin. Whereas proto-cuneiform is written in visual hierarchies, proto-Elamite is written in an in-line style: numerical signs follow the objects they count, some non-numerical signs are images of the objects they represent although the majority are entirely abstract.

Proto-Elamite was used for a brief period around 3000 BCE (presumably contemporary with Uruk III or Jemdat Nasr in Mesopotamia), whereas Linear Elamite is attested for a similarly brief period sometime during the last qarter of the 3rd millennium BCE.

The Proto-Elamite script has been described as very similar to the Indus script.^[1]

Proto-Elamite writing system was used over a very large geographical area, stretching from Susa in the west, to Tepe Yahya in the east, and perhaps beyond. The known corpus of inscriptions consists of some 1600 tablets, the vast majority unearthed at Susa.

Proto-Elamite tablets have been found at the following sites (in order of number of tablets recovered):

• Susa (more than 1500 tablets)
• Malyan (more than 30 tablets)
• Tepe Yahya (27 tablets)
• Sialk (22 tablets)
• Ozbaki (one tablet)
• Shahr-i-Shokhta (one tablet)
• Jiroft (two tablets)[2]

None of the inscribed objects from Ghazir, Chogha Mish or Hissar can be verified as Proto-Elamite, the tablets from Ghazir and Choga Mish are Uruk IV style or numerical tablets, whereas the Hissar object cannot be classified at present. The majority of the Sialk tablets are also not proto-Elamite strictly speaking, but belong to the period of close contact between Mesopotamia and Iran, presumably corresponding to Uruk V - IV.

Although Proto-Elamite remains undeciphered, the content of many texts is known. This is possible because certain signs, and in particular a majority of the numerical signs, are direct loans from the neighboring Mesopotamian writing system, proto-cuneiform. In addition, a number of the proto-Elamite signs are actual images of the objects they represent. However, the majority of the proto-Elamite signs are entirely abstract, and their meaning can only be deciphered through careful graphotactical analysis.

While the Elamite language has been suggested as a likely candidate underlying the Proto-Elamite inscriptions, there is no positive evidence towards this. The earliest Proto-Elamite inscriptions, being purely ideographical, do not in fact contain any linguistic information, and following Friberg's 1978/79 study of Ancient Near Eastern metrology, decipherment attempts have moved away from linguistic methods.

• Jacob L. Dahl, "Complex Graphemes in Proto-Elamite," in Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (CDLJ) 2005:3. Download a PDF copy
• Peter Damerow, “The Origins of Writing as a Problem of Historical Epistemology,” in Cuneiform Digital Library Journal (CDLJ) 2006:1. Download a PDF copy
• Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund, The Proto-Elamite Texts from Tepe Yahya (= The American School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin 39; Cambridge, MA, 1989).
• Robert H. Dyson, “Early Work on the Acropolis at Susa. The Beginning of Prehistory in Iraq and Iran,” Expedition 10/4 (1968) 21-34.
• Robert K. Englund, “The State of Decipherment of Proto-Elamite,” in: Stephen Houston, ed. The First Writing: Script Invention as 
History and Process (2004). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 100-149. Download a PDF copy
• Jöran Friberg, The Third Millennium Roots of Babylonian Mathematics I-II (Göteborg, 1978/79).
• A. Le Brun, “Recherches stratigraphiques a l’acropole de Suse, 1969-1971,” in Cahiers de la Délégation archaéologique Française en Iran 1 (= CahDAFI 1; Paris, 1971) 163 – 216.
• Piero Meriggi, La scritura proto-elamica. Parte Ia: La scritura e il contenuto dei testi (Rome, 1971).
• Piero Meriggi, La scritura proto-elamica. Parte IIa: Catalogo dei segni (Rome, 1974).
• Piero Meriggi, La scritura proto-elamica. Parte IIIa: Testi (Rome, 1974).
• Daniel T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam (Cambridge, UK, 1999).

• Proto-Elamite (CDLI project, by J. L. Dahl)

• Roman Ghirshman