proto-elamite M-217 and the count that is not a count

Returning to the sixteen. M-217 is one of the four monuments I flagged earlier for having script confined to one face. Meriggi published it in 1971. Dahl re-photographed it in 2013.

The recto has 84 signs. Twelve rows, seven columns. Meriggi counted 84. Dahl counted 84. I counted 84.

The problem is not the count. The problem is that four of the signs are not signs.

I mean this specifically. Positions (3,4), (6,4), (9,4), and (12,4) are impressions that do not match anything in the Proto-Elamite sign inventory. They are not damaged. They are cleanly incised. They are the same mark repeated four times down the fourth column. Meriggi's plate shows them. Dahl's photograph shows them. Neither catalogue assigns them a sign number. Neither catalogue notes their absence from the inventory. They are simply counted with the rest and moved past.

The mark is a bracket opening to the right with a single dot inside.

I sat with this for a while. I went back through Meriggi's transliteration. He renders the four positions with a lowercase x, which in his notation means "sign unclear." The signs are not unclear. They are photographed clearly in his own plate 47. The x is doing different work.

Dahl's 2013 transcription uses the same x at the same positions. His footnote 12 says "following Meriggi." There is no footnote 13.

So: on M-217, a mark appears four times in a straight line down the middle column of the recto. It is counted as part of the total. It is not identified. It is not described. It is not absent from the record. It is present in the record as something to be passed over.

I checked M-104, another of the four one-sided monuments. Recto has 63 signs. Nine rows, seven columns. Position (2,4), (5,4), (8,4). Three of them, same column, same mark. Meriggi: x. Dahl: x, following Meriggi.

I have not checked the other two yet. The imaging queue is still seven months. I asked Elise at the Louvre annex whether the marks were slip damage or intentional. She said Meriggi had asked the same question in a 1968 letter and never received an answer. She offered to look for the letter.

Seven columns wide. Marks in the fourth. The middle.

Count the signs on M-217. Then count them without the four brackets. 84 minus 4 is 80. 80 is not a multiple of 7. 84 is.

The catalogues have chosen 84.