00:03At a time when global attention is fixed on modern-day Iran,
00:08one man has been chasing a mystery buried deep in its ancient past.
00:13A script 4,000 years old, undeciphered until now.
00:18For French archaeologist François Dessert, this wasn't just an academic puzzle.
00:24It was a lifelong quest.
00:31The script is called Linear Elimite, discovered over a century ago,
00:36but long considered impossible to decode.
00:39Each symbol, a fragment of a forgotten language.
00:43Each line, a message lost in time.
00:46At the University of Leeds in Belgium,
00:49Dessert spent years studying patterns, repetitions and structures,
00:54searching for meaning where none had been found before.
00:57Unlike cuneiform or hieroglyphs, this script stood alone,
01:02a unique Iranian system with no clear key to unlocking it.
01:11The breakthrough came not in Iran, but in London.
01:16Digitized images of ancient vases, covered in Linear Elimite inscriptions,
01:22offered the missing pieces.
01:24By comparing repeated sequences, Dessert began to decode the system.
01:30A language finally speaking again.
01:32It is Iranian, because now it is a new source,
01:36a new richesse now, which is revealed for the Iranian people.
01:40It is just to tell you, it is like if we were going to decode
01:42the hieroglyphs for the Egyptians.
01:44From all the scriptures that were used in Iran,
01:47the only scriptures that were really local,
01:49which were developed in the country that we call at the current time Iran,
01:54is the scripture Elimite linéaire.
01:56Apart from all the other scriptures that were used in Iran,
02:01the more precise words, it is an alpha-syllabic writing.
02:04It is to say that it works with five words, five signs
02:08which note the words, A, E, I, O, U,
02:11twelve signs which note the consonants,
02:13the Q, the L, the M, the P,
02:15well, I'm going to pass the best.
02:16And you imagine the crossings of the twelve consonants
02:19and the five words, and you will get sixty syllables.
02:23K, K, K, K, K, K, K, K, K, P, P, P, P, P.
02:26And so, five words, twelve consonants, sixty syllables, 77 signs.
02:32It is a system structured, not random symbols.
02:37A language with rules, sounds and rhythms.
02:44And there are doors open,
02:47that is, that the enumite linéaire
02:48has allowed to block the situation in some cases.
03:17For the first time, the LMI language
03:21can be understood on its own terms,
03:24not filtered through foreign systems.
03:31And, since I think that Proto-Elamite is the ancestor
03:35of the LMI language, I will use my knowledge
03:39of the recent phase of this writing,
03:42the LMI language,
03:43to go up,
03:45to go up,
03:46and tap into the most ancient sources
03:50that are these 1700 tablets Proto-Elamites,
03:53which are also preserved in the world.
04:00From ancient clay tablets
04:02to modern digital screens,
04:04a lost language has found its voice again.
04:07And as one script is finally understood,
04:11it opens the door to even older mysteries,
04:13still waiting to be solved.
04:15To be continued...
04:19To be continued...
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