Experts working on proto-Elamite hope they are on the point of 'a breakthrough' "The world's oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics."http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/12/the-evolution-of-writing-michael-gross.htmlThe evolution of writing - Michael Gross
Difficult read: A proto-Elamite clay tablet from the collection at the Louvre. Scribes used a stylus typically made of reed to press these shapes into the soft clay. (Photo: University of Oxford.)[quote]“An additional challenge,” says Dahl, “is the fact that they use no signs depicting body parts. They must have had a taboo forbidding that. The only exceptions are two pictographically constructed signs for female and male workers, which they took over from proto-cuneiform, obviously without regard to their pictorial associations.”[unquote]Display high quality version of this figure
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The presence of pictorial motifs on Proto-Elamite tablets is a pointer which reinforces the hypothesis of Meluhha and Elam as interaction areas. Hence I wrote to Michael Gross and Jacob Dahl:
[quote]From: S. Kalyanaraman
Date: Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: Request for clarification on four ancient 'undeciphered' writing systems
To: Michael Gross
Cc: "jacob.dahl@orinst.ox.ac.uk"
Thanks, Dr. Michael for your incredibly fast and lucid response, as lucid as your article in Current Biology.
I wish Jacob Dahl all success in his efforts at decipherment of Proto-Elamite writing system. It is a greater challenge than what Ventris faced with Linear B. Jacob has to succeed.
In the photograph of a tablet you show in the article, the obverse clearly shows a pictorial motif, a pattern also adopted in Indus Script writing used in an area which had contacts with Susa.[unquote]
In my view, the possibility of links between Proto-Elamite and Indus writing systems should not be ruled out, because both were literate writing systems.
Journal : The River Sarawati And Its People Dec 20
Part III : Of The Non – Resident Indian, 5000 Years Ago
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2566221/meluhhanvillage
“Based on cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia we know that there was at least one Meluhhan village in Akkad at that time, with people called ‘Son of Meluhha‘ living there. The cuneiform inscription (ca. 2020 BCE) says that the cylinder seal belonged to Shu-ilishu, who was a translator of the Meluhhan language. “The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script.”
(Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43). http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/48-1/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf
An Elamite statuette showed a person (king?) carrying an antelope on his hands, the same way a Meluhhan carried an antelope on his hands (as shown on a cylinder seal). Antelope carried by the Meluhhan is a hieroglyph: mlekh ‘goat’ (Br.); mr̤eka (Te.); mēṭam (Ta.); meṣam (Skt.) Thus, the goat conveys the message that the carrier is a Meluhha speaker.Meluhha lay to the east of Magan and was linked with carnelian and ivory. Gujarat was a carnelian source in the ancient world. Possehl locates Meluhha in the mountains of Baluchistan and speaks of meluhhans use of magilum-boat (Possehl, Gregory. Meluhha.in : J. Reade (ed.)
The Indian Ocean in Antiquity
Many scholars have noted the contacts between the Mesopotamian and Sarasvati – Sindhu (Indus) Civilizations in terms of cultural history, chronology, artefacts (beads, jewellery), pottery and seals found from archaeological sites in the two areas.
“…the four examples of round seals found in Mohenjodaro show well-supported sequences, whereas the three from Mesopotamia show sequences of signs not paralleled elsewhere in the Indus Script. But the ordinary square seals found in Mesopotamia show the normal Mohenjodaro sequences. In other words, the square seals are in the Indian language, and were probably imported in the course of trade; while the circular seals, although in the Indus script, are in a different language, and were probably manufactured in Mesopotamia for a Sumerian – or Semitic – speaking person of Indian descent…”
[G.R. Hunter,1932. Mohenjodaro--Indus Epigraphy, JRAS:466-503]
The acculturation of Meluhhans residing in Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennium BC is noted by their adoption of Sumerian names (Parpola, S., Parpola, A., and Brunswig, R.H. Jr. 1977.
“The adaptation of Harappan motifs and script to the Dilmun seal form may be a further indication of the acculturative phenomenon, one indicated in Mesopotamia by the adaptation of Harappan traits to the cylinder seal.” (Brunswig et al,1983, p. 110).
“Indian-style” seals have been found in Sumeria. In 1932, CJ Gadd published such seals from Mesopotamia (some of these are identified as Dilmun seals coming from Failaka and Bahrein Gulf islands).
Massimo Vidale notes : As the identification of the land of Meluhha with the coastal areas controlled by the Indus Civilization is almost universally accepted, the textual evidence dealing with individuals qualified as “men” or “sons” of Meluhha or called with the ethnonym Meluhha, living in Mesopotamia and of a “Meluhha village” established at Lagash (and presumably at other major cities as well) unescapably points to the existence of enclaves settled by Indian mmigrants…
Read on...http://vamadevananda.wordpress.com/tag/indus-script/
meluhhanvillage