A. (1991). Foreign workers in the Fortification Archive. In University of Ghent, Mésopotamie et Elam: Actes de la 36ème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale: Gand, 10–14 juillet 1989, Mesopotamian History and Environment: Occasional Publications 1. Ghent: University of Ghent, pp. 127–135.22 Waerzeggers, C. (2006). The Carians of Borsippa. Iraq, 68, pp. 1–22.
23 Wasmuth, M. (2009). Egyptians in Persia. In P. Briant, M. Chauveau (eds.), Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l’empire achéménide, Persika 14. Paris: de Boccard, pp. 133–140.
FURTHER READING
1 Henkelman, W.F.M., Stolper, M.W. (2009). Ethnic identity and ethnic labelling at Persepolis: the case of the Skudrians. In P. Briant, M. Chauveau (eds.), Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l’empire achéménide, Persika 14. Paris: de Boccard, pp. 271–329. Provides the reader with a good overview of the ethnic complexity of Persepolis, on the basis of a case study.
2 Jacobs, B. (2003). Die altpersischen Länderlisten und Herodots sogenannte Satrapienliste (Historien III 89–94): Eine Gegenüberstellung und ein Überblick über die jüngere Forschung. In R. Dittmann, C. Eder, and B. Jacobs (eds.), Altertumswissenschaften im Dialog: Festschrift für Wolfram Nagel zur Vollendung seines 80. Lebensjahres, Alter Orient Altes Testament 306. Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag, pp. 301–343. A comparative study of the lists of lands as found in the Achaemenid royal inscriptions and the Greek historiographer Herodotus.
3 Jacobs, B. (2012). Sprachen, die der König spricht: Zum ideologischen Hintergrund der Mehrsprachigkeit der Achämenideninschriften. In R. Rollinger, G. Schwinghammer (eds.), Gegenwart und Altertum: 125 Jahre Alte Geschichte in Innsbruck, Akten des Kolloquiums Innsbruck 2010, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, N.F. 3. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen, Bereich Sprachwissenschaften, pp. 95–130. Studies the trilinguality of the Achaemenid royal inscriptions from an ideological point of view.
4 Tavernier, J. (2008). Multilingualism in the Fortification and Treasury Archives. In P. Briant, W.F.M. Henkelman, M.W. Stolper (eds.), L’archive des Fortifications de Persépolis: État des questions et perspectives de recherches, Persika 12. Paris: de Boccard, pp. 59–86. Studies the interaction between the various languages used in the Persepolis administration.
5 Tavernier, J. (2020). Persian in official documents and the processes of multilingual administration. In C.J. Tuplin, J. Ma (eds.), Aršāma and his World. The Bodleian Letters in Context III. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Investigates the status of Old Persian within the Achaemenid Empire as well as the language policy of the Achaemenid kings.
CHAPTER 4 Languages and Script
Adriano V. Rossi
The ethnic and linguistic diversity of the Achaemenid oikumene impressed the external observers (the Bible, classic writers). The typical Achaemenid approach to this diversity was condensed in the Old Persian (OP) terms vispazana‐/paruzana‐, “(with) all/many kinds (of people)” translated into Babylonian as ša napar lišānu gabbi, “of all nationalities (?).”
Epigraphy documents the usage of different languages in the Achaemenid administration. Aramaic was, or was becoming, a sort of vehicular language (not official, Folmer 1995: p. 13), while local languages kept on being used in private texts, in the local administrations, and in some royal proclamations.
Despite the diffusion of so many languages, only three were used for the monumental records: OP, Elamite, and Babylonian. Different degrees of bilingualism and/or diglossia have been hypothesized.
The Achaemenid inscriptions are presumed to have been planned in OP, an Indo‐European (IE) language close to Avestan; the people associated with that language were the Achaemenids, who we conceive as an ethnic élite, settled in Fārs at an undetermined period (traditionally fixed at the end of the second millennium BCE, even if it could be antedated at least at the first half of that millennium). Although the basis for OP must lie in a southwestern Iranian dialect, the specific variety attested in the inscriptions is likely to correspond to a literary, artificial form of it.
It is commonly assumed that the specific cuneiform writing adapted to the language, the “OP script,” has not been used before Darius: the scribes of Cyrus seem to have used Babylonian, even if the extent of the documentation attributable to Cyrus is much reduced. Nonetheless, trilingual inscriptions (OP, Elamite, and Babylonian) are attested at palaces built by Cyrus at Pasargadae. Many scholars claim that the OP version was probably added later. Nylander (1967), who investigated the matter, questions that all OP inscriptions bearing Cyrus' name were forgeries by order of Darius (also Schmitt 2007: pp. 28–31), and believes that while Cyrus wrote the original texts in Elamite and Babylonian, Darius added their OP versions. Vallat (2011: pp. 277–279) supports their authenticity for paleographical reasons.
Even more complicated problems are posed by two gold laminae bearing inscriptions of Darius' great‐grandfather Ariaramnes and his grandfather Arsames, which may or may not be authentic.
It is uncertain whether the OP script was really invented during Darius' reign, as became fashionable to claim after Weissbach's siding (1911: pp. lx–lxix; Weissbach changed his mind before 1930, cf. Schaeder 1930: p. 293). As Diakonoff (1970) argued, the OP script may have been devised to write Median, or any other Iranian language. For those scholars who do not want to subscribe to Diakonoff's views, the inconsistencies of the OP script can be explained on the basis of a principle of economy: only the signs that were necessary to avoid ambiguity would have been created.
The problem of the language(s) and the script(s) used in everyday life on the plateau remains open. One could assume, with Grantovskij (1998: p. 342), that “Iranian languages had been subject to interdialectal merging long before the rise of Media;” Lecoq has pointed at the language of the inscriptions as a literary language (1974: pp. 56–58, 1997: p. 50), an interdialectal koiné (1974: p. 61). Kellens (2002: p. 455) suggests an interpretation in terms of sabir/lingua franca, Henkelman (2011: p. 615 fn. 105) of diglossia.
A document which could hint at the relation between royal proclamations and their dissemination is a passage in the Bisotun inscription, in which Darius says something about the monument/inscription itself, but a question about the interpretation of this passage (= OP § 70, Elam. Inscription L) has been going on for more than 100 years, and there is no consensus to date (research report: Rossi 2020). The Aramaic version of the inscription found at Elephantine (Folmer 1995: pp. 741–742) hints at an important role of this language, but surely not as pervasive as suggested by Sancisi‐Weerdenburg (1999) because of the scanty Aramaic evidence on the plateau.
Other ancient Iranian languages could be ascribed to the Achaemenid world. “Median” is a cover term used for the minimal Old Iranian remnants in the OP inscriptions (names, specific vocabulary items, etc.) and other sources (especially Elamite tablets), whose phonology departs from that which is believed to be “typical OP.” “Median” does therefore not refer to a specific language (theoretically a northwestern Iranian language, in view of its location) but is merely a conventional label (Rossi 1981, 2017b). Since the 1980s the Median component in Late Iron Age Iran has been strongly reduced, and the nerve‐racking search for a Median language and script as a major feature connoting the “Median State” collapsed (Schmitt 2003; Rossi 2010, 2017b). Even less can be said about the languages of the nomadic tribes known as Scythians/Saka (Mayrhofer 2006).
Moreover, as before the Achaemenids emerged the Iranian plateau had been inhabited by peoples who spoke Elamite (language with no relatives, attested
