A “New” Proto-Elamite Tablet with Unattested Numerical System from Tappeh Sofalin

Late 4th millennium B.C is a period of human life in which he developed writing on clay tablets as a major means of economic transactions. This process is one of the greatest inventions in human history, and perhaps the most important of them, which did not happen all at once and had a gradual trend from the Neolithic period to the second half of the fourth millennium BC. The main feature of this period, along with seals and seal impressions, is clay tablet with ideographic signs plus counting notations and then evolved with syllabic conventional signs in the later stages, which is probably the initial shape of the standard writing. These clay tablets in Iran have been obtained from Susa and Chogha Mish in Khuzestan, Sialk in Kashan and Sofalin in Tehran province. The excavation seasons at Tappeh Sofalin unearthed a significant corpus of administrative material culture that provides evidence for the use of a complex administration systems during the Proto Elamite period at the second half of the fourth millennium B.C. These evidences are closely related to administration systems known from sites in southwestern Iran, most prominently at Susa III period. The types of administrative evidences from economic tablets to ideo-numerical ones were found at Tappeh Sofalin, suggesting that the settlement prolonged during the Proto Elamite period. One of the diagnostic administrative materials unearthed during the expedition is an almost intact Proto Elamite tablet with an unattested numerical system. Given the relative scarcity of texts from this time, the example offered in this article should add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of one of the world’s oldest attested forms of writing. Here we discuss this Proto Elamite tablet and the meaning it conveys.