First document in Elamite cuneiform (2250 BCE) and
Khita of
Susa, king of
Awan. Elamite cuneiforms, c. 2250,
Susa,
Louvre Museum. The
earliest text using Elamite cuneiform, an adaptation of
Akkadian cuneiform, is a treaty between the Akkadian
Naram-Sin and the Elamite
Khita that dates back to 2250 BCE. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king
Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler
Hita, as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy". The Archives are the most important primary source for an understanding of the internal workings of the
Achaemenid Empire.
Other Achaemenid inscriptions The most famous Elamite scriptures and the ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual inscriptions of monuments commissioned by the Achaemenid Persian kings; the
Achaemenid royal inscriptions. The inscriptions, like the
Rosetta Stone's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was
Old Persian, which was deciphered in 1802 by
Georg Friedrich Grotefend. The second,
Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after the Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring
Semitic languages, the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Even today, lack of sources and comparative materials hinder further research of Elamite. == Inventory ==