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Decipherment of the Indus script: new angles and approaches, part 3

Language Log 2025-03-28

Martin Schwartz called my attention to the Jiroft culture:

The Jiroft culture, also known as the Intercultural style or the Halilrud style, is an early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) archaeological culture, located in the territory of present-day Sistan and Baluchestan and Kermān provinces of Iran.

The proposed type site is Konar Sandal, near Jiroft in the Halil River area. Other significant sites associated with the culture include Shahr-e Sukhteh (Burnt City), Tepe Bampur, Espiedej, Shahdad, Tal-i-Iblis and Tepe Yahya.

The grouping of these sites as an "independent Bronze Age civilization with its own architecture and language", intermediate between Elam to the west and the Indus Valley civilization to the east, was first proposed by Yusef Majidzadeh, head of the archaeological excavation team in Jiroft (south central Iran). The hypothesis is based on a collection of artifacts that have been formally excavated and recovered from looters by Iranian authorities; accepted by many to have derived from the Jiroft area (as reported by online Iranian news services, beginning in 2001).

(Wikipedia)

The late Irene Good (PhD University of Pennsylvania, 1999; Harvard University Peabody Museum, 2001; later Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art) worked at a number of Jiroft sites in the years just after they were discovered, especially on the important textiles that were preserved there.  Her investigations of the "palaeo-environmental perspective" on ancient textiles were instrumental in helping us understand the networks of trade, technology, and cultural transmission among Europe, MP, Iran, and IV.  See "Selected readings" for a biographical note on Irene.

As I have been trying in this series of posts to build a case for a formative connection between the Middle East and Indus Valley civilizations, Martin's mention of Jiroft is most welcome for many reasons.  It comes at the right time and the right place in the development of civilizations of that region (from Mesopotamia [MP] to Indus Valley [IV]).

Before the discovery of Jiroft, there was a time when the BMAC (Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex), which spread to the Indus Valley from around 2100 BCE, was recognized as a transit region between west and east, north and south.  Archeologists were searching for a culture somewhere midway between MP and IV that had bronze, agriculture, advanced art & architecture, and was literate.  BMAC manifestly possessed the former three, so it was quite a sensation when Fredrik Hiebert in 2000 excavated a small (1.3 X 1.4 cm, dated to c. 2300 BC), beautiful stamp seal carved of shiny jet or black lignite at Anau in Turkmenistan.  Controversy ensued when correspondences with similar Chinese style seals were noticed.  I will not rehash them here, but the issues were thoroughly, though not conclusively, discussed back in the decade after the seal was found.  For those who are interested, simply do a Google search on "anau seal".  See also the three articles in Sino-Platonic Papers that are listed in "Selected readings" below.

Here i will make a slight detour to discuss the location of BMAC.  I had always felt it was too far to the north to serve as a major transit zone between MP and IV (Jiroft was not known when BMAC was being energetically promoted by those who favored it as a key zone for the east-west transmission of advanced civilization).

Though it may be called the "Oxus civilization", apparently centred on the upper Amu Darya (Oxus River) in Bactria, most of the BMAC's urban sites are actually located in Margiana (modern Turkmenistan) on the Murghab river delta, and in the Kopet Dagh mountain range. There are a few later (c. 1950–1450 BC) sites in northern Bactria, currently known as southern Uzbekistan, but they are mostly graveyards belonging to the BMAC-related Sapalli culture. A single BMAC site, known as Dashli, lies in southern Bactria, current territory of northern Afghanistan. Sites found further east, in southwestern Tajikistan, though contemporary with the main BMAC sites in Margiana, are only graveyards, with no urban developments associated with them.

(Wikipedia)

Now we come face-to-face with the crux of the matter why I have become so deeply interested in Jiroft culture.  Although, through the work of Irene Good (see above), I had heard of Jiroft before, that was due to her research on the textiles and other artifacts from its sites.  I do not recall being aware that it possessed writing.  Not only is there evidence of writing at Jiroft, the nature of the evidence is particularly appealing in light of the MP-IV connection I'm attempting to make.

An inscription, discovered in a palace, was carved on a brick whose lower left corner only has remained, explained Yusef Majidzadeh, head of the Jiroft excavation team. "The two remaining lines are enough to recognize the Elamite script," he added. "The only ancient inscriptions known to experts before the Jiroft discovery were cuneiform and hieroglyph," said Majidzadeh, adding that "The new-found inscription is formed by geometric shapes and no linguist around the world has been able to decipher it yet."

Some archeologists believe the discovered inscription is the most ancient script found so far, predating these others, and that the Elamite Cuneiform and Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform written language originated in Jiroft, where the writing system developed first in its original form and was then spread across the old world.

(Wikipedia)

Admittedly sketchy, so much more investigation needs to be carried out, but, for the moment, it's exciting to contemplate that it's Elamite — in the right place and in the right time.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto]