Images Hidden in Script. The Invention of Writing in Ancient Iran (original) (raw)

The fundamental iconicity of ancient invented writing systems, whose signs regularly originate as depictions of things, speaks against a clear dichotomy between ‘reading’ and ‘seeing’ (Elkins 1999) located at the root of the invention process. The proto-Elamite script (c. 3200–2900 BC) from Iran was invented shortly after the two earliest known writing systems, the proto-cuneiform of southern Iraq and Egyptian hieroglyphs, but takes a significantly different approach to script as image and script in combination with image, using hundreds of schematic or geometric signs and displaying formal features that result in a distinctly writinglike impression. This chapter considers proto-Elamite’s innovative approach to graphic coding – including sign arrangement, a muted use of iconicity in sign construction, and an intentional delineation of script in relation to other image-making traditions. The characteristics of the system suggest that scribes were interested in developing an exclusionary code that concealed its messages, while nonetheless regularly adapting images from other media. The potentially misleading writinglike features of proto-Elamite can be better understood through situating its strategies of visual representation in relation to its inheritance of other domains of visual culture, most notably seals with their concern for restricting access to goods by circulating images within networks of encultured viewers. I suggest that iconicity in proto-Elamite script demonstrates a preference for re-creating images from other visual codes, rather than directly depicting the natural world. This adds nuance to our understanding of the significance of iconicity as a persistent feature of the invention process.