ABSTRACT

Writing was invented four times in different geographic areas, in Sumer, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. Proto-Elamite writing, finally, was a system whose ambition was restrained; it recorded only documents of an administrative nature, accounts of herd management, man power, grain production, perhaps some surface measurements. Around 1900 the writing of the Indus disappeared with the collapse of this civilisation, in company with linear Elamite writing. Some bilingual inscriptions from Susa are probably only partially bilingual and thus indirectly useful for the comprehension of the language written in linear writing. The borrowing had been made from a universe whose languages had only a distant relation with Elamite. Writing presupposes an intense conceptual activity, the very condition of its existence, and its inventors were aware that it would be in danger of disappearing if it was not taught.