Investigation, however, reveals that the earliest inscriptions found in the geographic region designated Elam are “mere lists of objects pictorially jotted down on clay-tablets with the numbers of each beside them, indicated by a simple system of strokes, circles and semicircles . . . their contents at this time are purely economic or administrative.” (Semitic Writing, by G. R. Driver, London, 1976, pp. 2, 3)

The weight of the argument of those opposing the inclusion of Elam among the Semitic peoples, therefore, rests principally upon later inscriptions in cuneiform, regarded as dating considerably within the second millennium B.C.E., as well as on the Behistun monument (of the sixth century B.C.E.), which contains parallel texts in Old Persian, Akkadian, and “Elamite.” The cuneiform inscriptions attributed to the Elamites are said to be in an agglutinative language (one in which root words are joined together to form compounds, thereby distinguished from inflectional languages). Philologists have not been able successfully to relate this “Elamite” language to any other known tongue.

The “Hittites” of Karatepe wrote bilingual inscriptions (evidently in the eighth century B.C.E.) in “Hittite” hieroglyphic script and in old Phoenician. Some 30,000 clay tablets of the time of Persian King Darius I were found at Persepolis, a royal Persian city.

Further showing that it is unwise to view the table of nations at Genesis chapter 10 as purely geographic, and not actually genealogical, is the evidence in the form of sculptures carved for Elamite kings and dated by archaeologists as far back as the time of Sargon I (whose rule they assign to the latter part of the third millennium). These sculptures not only present the form of typical Akkadian (Semitic Assyro-Babylonian) figures but also bear Akkadian inscriptions.​—The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, 1980, Vol. 1, p. 433.