Public joins quest to decode oldest undeciphered writing system

When Dr Jacob Dahl’s research project was described on the BBC news website as ‘Indiana Jones with software’, he could have expected that it would capture the public’s imagination.

But Dr Dahl of the Faculty of Oriental Studies could not have predicted that the level of interest in the story would lead him to set up a new project to get the public involved in decoding the world’s oldest undeciphered writing system.

Researchers from Oxford and Southampton universities developed a reflectance transformation imaging (RTI) system for ancient documentary artefacts to capture some of the world’s most important historical documents. After taking high-quality images of objects in the Louvre, Dr Dahl was able to make a breakthrough in deciphering proto-Elamite.

Hundreds of people contacted Dr Dahl and the BBC after the story broke in October and he has been flooded with offers of help from language experts, code breakers, mathematicians and interested members of the public.

Even the grandson of Gustave Jequier, one of the archaeologists who unearthed the proto-Elamite tablets over a century ago, has offered his assistance.

'More than a million people had read the story within 24 hours and there were so many emails arriving that I had to shut down the comment box,' says Sean Coughlan, education correspondent for BBC News Online.

'It shows the potential level of interest in serious academic research and how it can capture the public imagination. Even though no-one understands proto-Elamite yet, it still seems to be able to make headlines.'

A new website will allow these interested members of the public to study thousands of high-resolution images of tablets taken by a Reflective Transformation Imaging system and invites suggestions from those with a flair for codebreaking.

More information will be posted on the website as the project progresses.

'I am overwhelmed by the positive response to our work and hope that the renewed focus on this ancient writing system may help us towards a decipherment,' Dr Dahl says.

Some suggestions about what the writing system means might not prove so helpful, however.

David Buxton in Hampshire wrote to the BBC: 'I know what this is - it's a shopping list and DIY request from a wife for husband, who has "lost" it on the way after a few barley wines. Domestic life really has not changed that much!'