Elamite language

The Elamites constituted an ancient and influential civilization that flourished in the southwestern region of Iran from the third millennium BC, with significant cities like Susa, Anshan, and Madaktu.

Over the centuries, Elamite civilization developed alongside other influential Mesopotamian cultures such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians.

Although they had contact with these civilizations, the Elamite language was unrelated to the Semitic languages of Mesopotamia, reflecting a unique identity.

Nonetheless, Semitic presence in Northern India before Persian colonization may have left genetic traces among the Roma, reinforcing the idea of a minor Semitic heritage within their DNA.

Moreover, the origin of the Roma in Northern India, a region inhabited by Aryan and Dravidian peoples, may explain certain physical traits, such as a slightly brownish skin tone, leading some to speculate about an African origin.

This lineage connects them to the Madaite peoples with ancestral roots among the ancient Persians, Medes, and Parthians, all descendants of Madai, son of Japheth.

According to ancient interpretations regarding the various biblical peoples, there appears to be a Dravidian connection in the origins of the Roma, marked by the intermixing that occurred around one thousand five hundred years before Christ when Aryan peoples colonized Northern India.

Additionally, there is a slight Semitic influence stemming from Elamite groups contributing to the Roma's ethnic composition.

But later curious minds would realize the inscription was far older and even more important.

By the early 1800s, one scholar had noted that the Bisitun inscription was trilingual, containing what would soon be called Elamite, Old Persian, and Babylonian Akkadian.

Over the next few years, this trilingual inscription allowed increased decipherment of Akkadian texts, and by the middle of the century, hundreds of texts were being deciphered and even translated for the first time.

The Bisitun inscription had, just a couple years after the Rosetta Stone's rediscovery, provided for Mesopotamia the same helping hand that that famous find provided for Old Egyptian.

To paraphrase Herodotus, so much, then, for Cambyses' early life and brief mention as king of Babylon.

Babylon provides a nice grounding date for Cyrus's life, but it's fairly isolated due to so many contemporary records surviving there and usually nowhere else.

So we don't know exactly what Cyrus did next, but at some point, construction began on his new capital city, Pasargadae, something like Batrakatash in Elamite.

The Persians will become famous for keeping a sort of roaming capital, a mobile entourage of bureaucrats and court officials surrounding the king, often operating for extended periods of time away from Persia.

... or was it something beforehand? 'Cause, you know, you have these weird languages in the Br- uh, even before the Bronze Age, things like Linear A and Linear B and Mycenae that don't really-

Elamite.

Yeah, Elamite.

1923.

Right.

... area, area of Fars, where, where Persia is.

That's-

Oh, the Elamites.

So, some of these incantations were using what Finkel calls mumbo-jumbo words.

You know how we use abracadabra, alakazam? Does anybody know where those come from or what they mean? Okay, so some of the incantations that he finds, or has found, are actually using Elamite words.

So the Elamites were from what is now modern-day Iran, and so their language would have been foreign to people who could speak Akkadian and Babylonian.

So, they have words like zinzira, zinzurga, and it was just something that sounded good, right? But it's just, it doesn't mean anything.

And people are like, oh, this guy really knows what he's talking about if he's speaking the magic words, right? Yeah.