Archaeology and politics

 

Egypt might be the only civilization with a continuous recorded history stretching back to the 4th millenium BC. And when we come across Egyptologists reeling off third millennium BC dates with ease and with an assured familiarity, it makes us gape with awe. But does this mean that other civilizations did not count for as much as the Egyptians. Until recently, we too might have felt so but of late, discoveries have proved that there are other civilizations that might approach the Egyptians in continuity and they and the Mesapotamians in antiquity and that we had known far less about these old civilizations than the Egyptians only because archaeologists were less interested in them than Ancient Egypt or Mesapotamia.

The reason for this neglect lies in our religious affiliations. Over thirty percent of the world’s population is Christian and universities with the best archaeology departments are situated in the Christian world. In fact, archaeology as a discipline originated through efforts of antiquarians who wished to unearth places mentioned in the Bible and prove the historicity of Biblical people and Biblical events and thus, Biblical Archaeology is the one of the earliest streams of archaeology to become popular. Egyptology might very well be considered an outgrowth of Biblical archaeology for Egypt, though not a part of the Fertile Crescent, was still dear to the Biblical prophets of yore and the setting for many of the events attested to in the Old Testament.   And to this day, archaeology students in the West have a marked preference for Egyptology than say, Sinology or Indology; quite understandable, since the average American kid is likely to know more about Moses and Rameses than the Buddha.

Over the years, other cultures and civilizations have managed to interest the West - India, mainly due to the efforts of Sir William Jones, who proved the affinity of the Sanskrit to Greek and Latin and hence  kindling a sense of belonging in the hearts of our British colonizers who were, as Anglo-Saxon or Celt,  eventually kin to the ancient Indo-Aryans; Persia, for a similar reason, and the Buddhist world for the Buddha’s teachings, they came to understand, were similar to that of Jesus Christ. Still, there are far few takers for Sinology or Japanology outside the Chinese or Japanese diaspora and the chequered history and heritage of Southeast Asia and Indonesia remain largely unknown to the average westerner. Native American, Australian aborigine and Maori studies are niche with a limited local appeal while few, even amongst the academic fraternity, are aware of the latest developments in African archaeology.  

Tamil studies remains quite visible, thanks to the efforts of the considerably numerous and influential Tamil expat population but it might never have the sort of appeal that Biblical or Indo-European, to a lesser extent, has. True, Tamilology blends well with Indology but Indologists have over the years realized that it also has a considerable volume of  literature parallel to and disconnected from that of the north and specialization of which might lie outside the bounds of traditional Indology as taught in western schools or universities. But the best example of a civilization that has suffered at the hands of western archaeologists might be the one of the Elamites. The Elamite language has been classified as a language isolate unrelated to either the Indo-European or the Semitic though it is speculated that there might be links to the Dravidian language family. And though the name Elam is found in the Bible, it was actually a case of mistaken identity and the real Elamite people had nothing to do with the Biblical Elamites. What more! Iranians, today, prefer to identify themselves as – first, Muslim as opposed to non-Muslim, and Shiite Indo-Aryan as opposed to the Sunni Iraqi or Arab. In an Iran proud of its distinct Persian roots and Shiite Islam and where there is subtle dislike and contempt for its Sunni Arab neighbours, there would be obviously not many who would be keen enough to acknowledge their Elamite genetic roots and political correctness dictates that history be taught from an “Aryan” Achaemenid perspective. Moreover, though the Elamites constructed beautiful castles and ziggurats, there were not prominent empire builders as the Achaemenids and lay Iranians were more likely to know about Cyrus or Darius the Great than, say, Sutruk-Nahhunte or Untash-Nappirisha who constructed Chogha Zunbil.

And due to all this neglect, Elamite studies have languished for long. The name "Elamite" itself wasn’t bestowed until the twentieth century (the 19th century missionary-linguist Robert Caldwell while describing the Behistun inscription in his seminal work Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Family of Languages (1856), calls the language Scythian. George Bertin, in his 1888 book Abridged Grammars of the Languages of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, considers it to be a dialect of the Median Language and calls it Susian) and to this day remains a vague designation for the people – as vague as Celt for pre-Roman Britons, and the ethnic group/s that answered to this name were scattered across three kingdoms on the Iran-Iraq border – Awan, Elam and Shimaski, barely united by bonds of culture and language. The Late Elamite cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis and Naqsh-i-Rustam were deciphered as recently as 1890 but the vast majority of rock and seal inscriptions (including a considerable corpus of hieroglyphic texts) are older and many remain undeciphered to this day. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Linear Elamite, a script used towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC was satisfactorily deciphered by Walther Hintz (1906-1992) who was not a professional archaeologist but had served for a time as a counter-intelligence officer for the Germans during World War II and had been interned by Allied occupation forces. A still-older hieroglyphic script that was used in Elam at about the same time when the Indus Valley Civilization flourished remains only partially deciphered and though technically given the name Proto-Elamite on account of the seals being older than those of the Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions, many contest the naming as there is no established relationship between the language of the hieroglyphs with the Elamite of the cuneiform texts. So, our knowledge of Elam is still obscure and rudimentary like a patchwork of incomplete jigsaw pieces and a host of unanswered questions remain.

There are many other cultures and civilizations which are only barely known. Tocharian, the easternmost of all Indo-European languages was first noticed in the early 20th century. The Hattians, a people who preceded the Hittites in Anatolia have left behind only faint traces of their presence and their language remains unclassified till date. This does not mean these civilizations were unimportant. Far from being that, there are many who feel that the Proto-Elamite language might contain clues for the decipherment of the as yet unknown and unread Indus script and cracking Proto-Elamite might help unlock the mysterious code of the IVC. But then, when I scoured the internet for an university with a dedicated Elamite studies department, I was in for a rude shock. Harvard has the best Egyptology department in the world, Oxford for the study of Greek and Roman classics and the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), London (which has a statue of the poet-saint Thiruvalluvar in its campus as testament to its commitment towards "Oriental Studies") for the study of ancient India, Iran, China, Japan, the Far East, and Africa, but while many universities do conduct courses on Hittitology and Assyriology, there is only one - the University of Leiden (Netherlands) that offers an introductory course on the Elamite language. Nowhere is the apathy more evident that in the fact that the discipline doesn't have a name as yet (Academics might perhaps consider coining the terms  - Elamology, Elamophily, etc., for Elamite studies). It might be far more rewarding for Christian organisations to invest their money in establishing the historicity of Biblical figures or Hindutva organisations in semi-mythical divinities, Chinese billionaires for propagating Buddhist tenets or preserving manuscripts, but for a long and truly dead civilization as that of the Elamites, who cares!

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