There are many stories connected with the decipherment of ancient writings and the recovery of forgotten languages, but these stories need not be retold here. Furthermore, they usually deal only with the discovery of the key, that brief moment of insight when some datum is arrived at, which when inserted causes the rest of the puzzle to fall into place. But what we are interested in here is the tremendous amount of work, routine but necessary, which precedes that moment and makes the decipherment possible, and the even more tremendous amount of work which follows that moment and results in the recovery of the language.

Die proto-elamische Schrift bietet sich uns in zwei Abarten dar: A, die Schrift der Rechnungstäfelchen; B, die monumentale oder lapidäre, auf Stein und einigen anderen Gegenständen. Der Aufbau der Rechnungen in der Schrift A kann durch zwei Beispiele einfacher, wohl primitiver Art gezeigt werden. Damit kann man als ganz ähnlich zwei Beispiele aus den sumerischen “Archaischen Texten aus Uruk” vergleichen. Sehr weitgehend ist die Ähnlichkeit der beiden Zahlsysteme, besonders was die komplizierten Bruchzahlzeichen angeht. Aber im übrigen weichen beide Schriften vollständig voneinander ab, sodass vom Sumerischen keine Hilfe fürs Proto-elamische zu erwarten ist.

The system of writing which we call Linear Elamite was fully developed in the 23rd century B.C., but it seems that it did not survive the last of the 12 rulers of the dynasty of Awan. The name of this king was, in Babylonian, Puzur-Inshushinak. He reigned, according to the middle chronology, from c. 2260 to c. 2225 B.C. From c. 2200 B.C. the Elamites used only the Akkadian cuneiform script which they formerly had employed alongside their own Elamite script.

In detail, the following is the situation regarding the languages of ancient Asia Minor and Mesopotamia:

Non-Indo-European language

Apart from the Semitic languages and Egyptian, at least five isolated languages are ascribable to that period in which the Sumerians and Egyptians had already invented their script. All five languages are recorded in the so-called Akkadian cuneiform, a syllabic script which the Sumerians had developed from their picture-writing.

This paper is concerned with the phonetic values of four important Hieroglyphic signs: ↑ (HH, Nos. 376, 377) and (HH, Nos. 209, 210). To ↑ and the values i and a were ascribed long before the discovery of the Karatepe bilingual in 1948. On the other hand the differentiation of the second sign of each pair, viz. and , by the double stroke has never been fully explained. Conventionally the signs were transcribed as ī and ā, and this transcription has now become canonical, though there is no reason to believe that the distinction between, e.g., ↑ and is one of length.

Das Lydische ist uns hauptsächlich durch eine Reihe von Inschriften bekannt, die fast alle auf dem Gebiet des klassischen Lydien (insbesondere in der Hauptstadt Sardis) gefunden wurden. Sieht man von einigen kleineren Schriftzeugnissen ab (wie Münzen und Siegel), deren Herkunft nicht feststeht, so beschränkt sich die Anzahl der Inschriften, die ausserhalb des lydischen Gebiets ans Licht gekommen sind und wohl nur von der vorübergehenden Anwesenheit von einzelnen lydischen Sprechern zeugen, auf drei: eine Weihinschrift aus Pergamon, ein Steinfragment mit Resten von drei Wörtern aus Aphrodisias in Karien und ein altertümliches Graffito aus Oberägypten. Inwieweit die als lydisch bezeichneten Glossen tatsächlich von dieser Sprache Zeugnis ablegen, ist in vielen Fällen fraglich: bezeichnenderweise findet nur eine solche Glosse eine sichere Übereinstimmung in der Sprache der uns bekannten Inschriften, was indessen auch auf Zufall beruhen könnte; es handelt sich um πλμυς “König”, dem das qaλmλuś unserer Texte entspricht, doch muss man bei diesem als Name eines kleinasiatischen Häuptlings schon bei Homer belegten Wort einschränkend hinzufügen, dass es wahrscheinlich ein altes Lehnwort im Griechischen darstellt. Hinzu kommt noch τασας, das sicher mit lyd. tavśaś “mächtig” zu identifizieren ist und als Glosse ohne Angabe der Herkunftsprache überliefert wurde.

Crete is a large off-shore island, and whether it belongs primarily to Europe or to Asia is a moot point—it is equidistant from the European and Asiatic mainlands of the Aegean. Inevitably it has served as an intermediate link in the transmission of influences in either direction. Hence I am pleased to see its indigenous script accorded a place in this Symposium, alongside many other famous problems.

Two categories of non-Greek inscriptions from Crete, known as Minoan and Eteocretan, are from different periods. Minoan documents stem from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (particularly c. 1850–1400 B.C.), whereas the extant Eteocretan texts were inscribed during Early Iron III (c. 600–300 B.C.). In assigning both categories to North-west Semitic, we shall base our conclusions on the inscriptions themselves, rather than on secondary considerations. Proper names will not be used as primary evidence, because people (including ourselves) often bear names derived from languages other than the one they speak. The same goes for the names of the places they inhabit and of the gods they worship. We shall not reiterate the evidence of history and tradition. Since our problem is linguistic, we shall concentrate on the direct linguistic data in the Minoan and Eteocretan inscriptions.

C'est au cours du IIe millénaire avant notre ére, plus exactement vers la fin du XVIe siècle, que l'île de Chypre a connu sa première écriture. L'aspect et la nature des plus anciens documents indiquent que cette écriture est très probablement issue du “linéaire A” crétois, et pour cette raison, Arthur Evans l'avait dénommée “chypro-minoenne”. Cette branche la plus orientale des écritures linéaires égéennes va connaître assez rapidement un développement autonome et donner naissance à des répertoires nouveaux, soit à Chypre même, sur le site d'Enkomi, soit, hors de l'île, à Ras Shamra-Ougarit, sur la côte syrienne. En effet, si la documentation encore insuffisante ne permet pas de retracer toutes les étapes de son développement, il est possible de déceler les phases essentielles. II y a tout d'abord une période archaïque, représentée par de rares témoignages datant du XVIe et du XVe siècle, lesquels, aussi bien par leur présentation matérielle que par le dessin précis des signes, apparaissent encore comme des reflets fidèles de ceux des documents crétois. Ensuite, vers le XIVe siècle, on voit apparaître un répertoire chypro-minoen bien établi, qui a pris son caractère propre et ne montre plus qu'une ressemblance lointaine avec l'écriture “mère” de la Crète.

In one form or another, the so-called Linear script of Class A was used in parts of Minoan Crete from the 20th to the middle of the 15th century B.C. It is closely related to two other Cretan scripts, with both of which it overlaps to some extent: an earlier (known as Hieroglyphic or, better, as Pictographic) and a later (known as the Linear script of class B). The precise nature of the interrelationship of these three scripts is not clear. They do not, apparently, descend from one another by a simple process of development. Rather, both Linear A and Linear B seem to have selected elements from a common source, which is either the Pictographic script itself or a system of writing allied to it. The closest similarity between the two classes of Linear script is evident in their external character, that is to say, in the shapes of individual signs: even so, only about half of the signs in the Linear A system have the same shape as those in Linear B. There is much less resemblance in internal character (the structure and function of the scripts). For example, although we find in Linear A many single signs (apparently ideographic or determinative in function) and also sign-groups (which, by reason of the small number employed in all and also by analogy with Linear B practice, are almost certainly phonetic), ideograms are very rarely juxtaposed with phonetic groups, as constantly happens in Linear B. Linear A offers only two certain examples of such juxtaposition, namely in HT 15:1 and 88:4, and even there the order is the reverse of that in Linear B, where the phonetic group regularly precedes the ideogram.

As late as 1920 it was believed that civilization on the Indian subcontinent dated back only to the time of Alexander's invasion in the 4th century b.c. and that everything before that was “dark”. This assumption was made in spite of the fact that literary evidence pointed to the contrary. However, in 1921 the “belief” received its first blow when Daya Ram Sahni discovered the site of Harappa; the second one came just a year later when R. D. Banerji discovered Mohenjo-daro. Subsequent excavations at these two sites and at another site called Chanhu-daro, respectively by M. S. Vats, John Marshall, and E. J. H. Mackay, brought to light fuller details of the civilization which encompassed the Indus valley in the 3rd millennium b.c. The more recent work at Amri, Damb Sadaat, Gumla, Jalilpur, Kalibangan, Kot Diji, Lothal, Sarai Khola, and Surkotda has added new dimensions to our knowledge of this civilization.

The Indus script is at present known from about 3,000 inscriptions with an average length of only five signs. The longest continuous text (1400) comprises only 17 characters divided over three lines. There are no bilingual inscriptions. Also, direct historical data relating to the Indus civilization are extremely scanty, being limited to the scarce references in cuneiform texts of the 3rd and early 2nd millennia B.C. to trade and other contacts with Meluḫḫha, the most distant country known to the Mesopotamians of those times, whose identity with the Indus civilization at the period in question is now widely accepted. More texts in the Indus script are, and will be, forthcoming from recent and imminent excavations, and perhaps the excavations that are under way in ancient Lagaš will bring to light the long-expected bilingual, possibly in the form of a cuneiform document mentioning Meluḫḫan proper names and bearing the impression of an Indus seal. In the absence of such a clue, the prospects of ever understanding the Indus script have generally been considered rather meagre. This pessimistic attitude has long been obstructing progress in the study of the Indus script. The very first point I should like to make is, that despite the scantiness of the material, it is indeed possible to promote our knowledge in many ways, and that important results are sure to come from more work by more people. One of our greatest needs at the moment is an increase of interest in the Indus script, and the coordination of scholarly efforts.