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Achaemenid royal inscriptions normally refer not to Elam as a place but to Elamites as a people (Elamite Hatamtip). The indigenous ancient name of the language is not attested. The consensus modern term “Elamite” reflects Sumerian and Akkadian references to the “language of Elam.” Soon after the decipherments, recognizing that the language of Achaemenid inscriptions of “the second kind” also appeared in many older inscriptions from Susa, some scholars called the language “Susian.” Others, contemplating the royal title found in those older texts, “King of Anzan and Susa,” and surmising that the language was original to a region farther from Mesopotamia than Susa was, called it “Anzanite” – even though the location of Anzan long remained a matter of disagreement (Potts 2011: pp. 36–37).

No ancient languages are known to be cognate with Elamite, and no later languages are known to be descended from Elamite. The hypothesis that Elamite is distantly related to Dravidian languages, a matter of disagreement among modern scholars, has had no firm consequences for the elucidation of Elamite grammar or lexicon. In practical terms, Elamite remains a linguistic isolate (Stolper 2004: p. 61 with references; Starostin 2002 with review of proposals and lexical evidence).

Readable Elamite texts are written in versions of the cuneiform script that was developed in Mesopotamia to record Sumerian and Akkadian. The script was also adapted to record other Near Eastern languages between the third and first millennia BCE, including Eblaite, Hurrian, Urartian, and Hittite. The Elamite adaptation of this writing system is economical by comparison with the Mesopotamian applications of it in two senses. First, the number of characters is comparatively small: slightly more than 200 characters are attested in Elamite cuneiform writing from all periods. Only 100–150 are found in any period, about 135 in Achaemenid Elamite (Steve 1992). Second, the incidence of homophony (many characters with the same signification) and polyphony (single characters with many significations) is comparatively small. Late pre‐Achaemenid and Achaemenid Elamite sign inventories include a comparatively high proportion of logograms (characters representing words) because large groups of administrative records come only from these periods.

In Achaemenid multilingual royal inscriptions, the mostly syllabic orthography of the Elamite versions required fewer characters than the Old Persian but more characters than the Babylonian counterparts. For example, in the seal inscription SDa, the phrase “I, Darius, King” requires 12 characters in Old Persian, 10 in Elamite, and even with the title expanded to “Great King,” 9 in Babylonian. In the main Bisutun inscriptions, the first four columns of the Old Persian text cover c. 27.33 m², the corresponding three columns of the Elamite c. 21.5 m², and the corresponding Akkadian c. 15.33 m² (King and Thompson 1907: pp. xxiii–xxiv). As a result, symmetrical displays of versions often required adjustments of character size or spacing and sometimes motivated editorial differences (cf. Henkelman 2003; Kozuh 2003).

Almost all pre‐Achaemenid Elamite cuneiform texts come from sites in modern Khuzestan and Fars. The northern and eastern extent of the area in which Elamite was spoken is a matter of dispute. The oldest documents from the areas where Elamite cuneiform texts are found are written in two as yet undeciphered scripts, called Proto‐Elamite (using about 1000 characters, found on about 1600 clay tablets, most from Susa, a few from sites in Fars, Kerman, and Seistan, dated c. 3100–2900 BCE, see http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=proto‐elamite) and Linear Elamite (using about 100 attested characters, found on 21 or more stone, clay, and silver objects, most from Susa, one probably from Fars, one fragmentary and uncertain example from Seistan, another from Margiana, dated c. 2100 BCE; see http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=linear‐elamite). It is plausible but not demonstrable that both scripts record texts in Elamite language. If so, the area in which Elamite was once spoken perhaps included easternmost Iran.

The oldest datable Elamite text written in cuneiform script, a treaty with a Mesopotamian king, comes from about 2100 BCE. Other pre‐Achaemenid Elamite texts include about 210 royal inscriptions on bricks, stelae, reliefs, statues, votive objects, and other portable objects; about 400 administrative texts (almost all in two archival clusters, one from Khuzestan and one from Fars); about 20 letters (some excavated at sites in Assyria and Armenia) and legal texts (from Susa); an omen text and a hemerological text (from Susa). A few Elamite passages or glosses appear in Akkadian texts from Mesopotamia. Elamite names, words, and loanwords appear in Akkadian and Sumerian legal and administrative texts from both Mesopotamia and Iran.

Thus, by the time the Achaemenid kings began to keep written records, Elamite was long established as a language of practical literacy in southern and western Iran. It was used often for royal display and commemoration, sometimes for legal and administrative recording, and occasionally even for scholarly transmission. It was the foremost vehicle by which inhabitants of ancient Iran communicated in writing.