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Most Achaemenid Elamite administrative texts belong to two archives discovered at Persepolis. The 20 000–30 000 excavated tablets and fragments of the Persepolis Fortification Archive are the remains of about 15 000–18 000 original documents, about 70% of them bearing Elamite texts (Jones and Stolper 2008). About 2400 of the Elamite texts have been published; a publication of about 2500 others, widely cited in preliminary form, is forthcoming; and editions of about 1000–2000 more are in preparation (Henkelman 2013; Henkelman infra, with references). They are dated between 509 and 493 BCE. They record the storage and distribution of food (cereals and cereal products, beer, wine, oil, etc.) and livestock in the region around Persepolis, to support workers, administrators, religious personnel, courtiers, and others.

All but one of the 746 excavated tablets and fragments of the Persepolis Treasury Archive bear Elamite texts, 138 of them published (Azzoni et al. 2017, with references). Most are dated between 492 and 457 BCE. A few are as old as 507‐505 BCE (Stolper, Henkelman, and Garrison 2020). Most deal with payments of silver from a treasury in Persepolis to workers at or near Persepolis.

A single Achaemenid Elamite administrative text believed to come from Susa closely resembles texts from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, even bearing a seal found on Persepolis Fortification tablets (Garrison 1996). The sign forms, text layout, and few preserved words on a fragmentary tablet excavated at Old Kandahar, in Afghanistan, closely resemble those of Persepolis Fortification texts (Fisher and Stolper 2015). These isolated remains of lost archives suffice to show that the use of Elamite for state administrative recording was widespread in Achaemenid Iran.

Of other known isolated Achaemenid Elamite administrative documents, some originated in the Persepolis Fortification Archive (Vallat 1994: pp. 264, 272; Jones and Stolper 2006; Henkelman et al. 2006; probably Grillot 1986). Others, of uncertain provenience, may be survivors of lost archives (Jones and Stolper 1986: pp. 247–253; Garrison, Jones, and Stolper 2018).

Like Elamite versions of Achaemenid royal inscriptions, Elamite administrative records at Persepolis were products of a multilingual environment, in two senses.

First, though dominated by Elamite documents, the archives also included texts in other languages: more than 840 monolingual Aramaic Fortification texts, as well as single Greek, Old Persian and Phrygian Fortification texts, and two in Demotic Egyptian dealing with the same or similar matters as the Elamite records; and Aramaic epigraphs, aids to document handling, on more than 250 Elamite Fortification tablets. Archive keepers had to be passively proficient with information written in several languages, and actively proficient enough to mark their handling of Elamite records with notes written in Aramaic (Azzoni and Stolper 2015).

Second, the many transcriptions of Iranian words in Elamite administrative texts (Tavernier 2007) and the frequent calques on Old Iranian syntax reveal that the records were composed by and for speakers of Old Iranian languages and dialects; for many or most of them, Elamite was an acquired written language.