Elamite

The principal language of the lowland and highland regions east of Mesopotamia known to their Mesopotamian neighbors as Elam, attested over more than two millennia from the third millennium BCE through the late Achaemenid period. Elamite is a language isolate with no demonstrated genetic relationship to any other known language family, despite long contact with Sumerian, Akkadian, and Old Persian. Elamite speakers called their own land Haltamti; the name “Elam” is the Akkadian exonym, transmitted into Hebrew and Greek and ultimately into modern usage.

Elamite is conventionally divided into Old, Middle, and Achaemenid Elamite phases. The Achaemenid phase is particularly well attested, since Elamite served as one of the three chancellery languages of the Persian Empire alongside Old Persian and Akkadian, and a substantial body of administrative tablets from Persepolis preserves its everyday use. The script used for Elamite in this period is an adapted Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform; an earlier, undeciphered linear script known as Linear Elamite is attested separately from the late third millennium BCE.

@misc{onomastikon-elamite,
  author = {Rajagopal, Shriram},
  title = {Elamite},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://onomastikon.org/languages/elamite}},
  note = {Onomastikon: A Digital Atlas of Ancient Names}
}