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. In a room high up in the
Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of
early civilisations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out
light.
This device, part sci-fi, part-DIY, is providing the most detailed and
high quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay
tablets. This is Indiana Jones with software. It's being used to help
decode a writing system called
proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran.
No comments:
Post a Comment