I’m the first to advocate for computational tools in script decipherment, and for crowdsourcing-style work in aid of such efforts. But is it just me, or is this account of current steps towards a proto-Elamite decipherment not really a story? The phrase ‘could be about to be decoded’ and the lack of any published work (so far) does not give me hope. Don’t get me wrong: I do think that Proto-Elamite is decipherable, although I’m not sure what to make of the (new-ish?) claim for the absence of scribal training as an explanation for apparent errors. Anyway, I will of course be following this actively, but I’m not holding my breath.
Filed under: Linguistics
