ArtFire

These earrings represent fragments of Proto-Elamite text on bronze, hung with bronze wire bails from hypoallergenic niobium earwires. They are 3/4" wide and 2" long including the bails.

Proto-Elamite originated around 3050 BC in what is now western Iran. It is the oldest undeciphered script. Although some signs are understood because they are images of objects they represent or because they are borrowed from another script, most of the symbols and the language itself are unknown.

I-317

As I reached the pictures in the "New Scientist" article I knew I had stumbled on what I had been looking for. Bronze has a feeling of antiquity about it that seems suited to fragments of text, and I wanted to incorporate script into the pieces I was making, but in all the texts I was looking at the meaning had to be considered. Here were "Eight Scripts That Still Can't Be Read", and they were both enormously varied and visually intriguing. From the organic feel of Linear A to the impossible precision of Rongo-rongo, from the almost familiar pictures of Olmec, Proto-Elamite, and the Phaistos Disc to the abstract lines and squiggles of Meroitic, all were visually and intellectually engaging in a different way than known text could be. They say something, but they are more cultural artifact than simple text. Even if one turns out to be a warehouse inventory I won't be disappointed because their meaning goes beyond their translation. So here is my "Undeciphered Texts" collection.

bronze, niobium