Decipherment of Outdated Persian

2024-01-22 02:38:29

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Outdated Persian was the language utilized by the Persians through the time of the Achaemenian era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE) and is thought to us to a big extent via the inscriptions (particularly the inscriptions at Behistun) of Darius I, the Nice, who employed the cuneiform script.

Outdated Persian is taken into account to be a Western Iranian language, whereas the languages of the Avesta are thought-about to be Outdated Japanese Iranian languages and significantly predate Outdated Persian.

Outdated Persian advanced into Center Persian, the language of the Parthian and Sassanian eras (third century BCE to seventh century CE) and ultimately into Fashionable Persian.

The transition from Outdated Persian to Center Persian is clear after the autumn of Seleucid occupation (the Seleucids had been descendants of the Macedonian Alexander’s generals) (312-129 BCE) and the liberation of Iranian lands by the Arsacids / Parthians (c. 247 BCE – 229 CE). The dates of the 2 guidelines overlap since pockets of Seleucid rule continued till their last expulsion.

The transition from Center Persian to Fashionable Persian was gradual, and within the Tenth-Eleventh centuries CE, Center Persian texts had been nonetheless being written and skim by audio system of early New Persian.

By the point of the autumn of the Sassanian period, data of the Achaemenians as a dynasty and data of Outdated Persian had been misplaced to Iranians. Persepolis, a capital of the Achaemenians, was referred to as Takht-e Jamshid, the throne or capital of the legendary King Jamshid, and there existed every kind of improbable tales to clarify the existence of the Behistun monument (for additional particulars, please see our web page on Behistun).

We owe the rediscovery of the Achaemenian dynasty and the Outdated Persian language they used, to European curiosity and dedication to the decipherment of the Outdated Persian inscriptions, a course of that took practically 100 years and far frustration. This web page, and the notes that comply with, are a testomony to that persistence and dedication.

Nevertheless, Western curiosity was not all the time useful. British troopers stationed in Iran through the Second World Conflict, used the Behistun monument for goal observe and badly broken a number of the inscription.

With discovery comes consideration and misplaced enthusiasm. Most of the historic monuments have been looted, severely broken by very poor archaeological practices, and harm by the weather. A few of the monuments had been higher protected after they had been buried within the sand.

Round 1764 CE, Carsten (or Karsten) Niebuhr (1733 – 1815), a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer, visited the traditional web site at Behistun and made copies of the cuneiform inscriptions. He visited Persepolis in March 1765, and in three weeks and a half copied all of the texts. This reproductions had been ready so diligently, the few adjustments have been made to them since.

[Records indicate that the earliest European who visited the Persepolis site south of Behistun – around 1320 CE – was a wandering friar named Odoricus. Odoricus does not make mention of the inscriptions at Persepolis. Rather, it was Josaphat Barbaro, a Venetian traveller, who visited the site about 1472 CE and made mention of the inscriptions. In 1621 CE, the ruins were visited by Pietro della Vallee, who copied a few of the signs, facsimiles of which he sent in a letter to a friend in Naples. Then in 1711, Jean-Baptiste Chardin (later to become Sir John Chardin) who visited Persepolis, known then as Chehel Minar (forty columns) on three occasions in 1667, 1673, and 1674, published in Amsterdam, a carefully and accurately reproduced facsimile of one of the small inscriptions he had seen in the ruins of Persepolis. cf. A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin’s Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Empire by Sir John Chardin, Ronald W. Ferrier and Travels in Persia 1673-1677 by Sir John Chardin. Chardin, however, could not decipher the inscriptions.]

The duty of deciphering the inscriptions at Persepolis and Behistun was undertaken by Carsten Niebuhr after his return to Denmark. He concluded that the inscriptions had been to be learn from left to proper, and confirmed the sooner theories that the inscriptions had been in three totally different programs of cuneiform that had been all the time stored distinctly separate within the inscriptions which he categorized as lessons I, II and III. Nevertheless, he didn’t conclude these lessons had been three totally different languages. He targeted on the inscriptions in school I and remoted forty-two indicators and concluded that the phrases had been made up of alphabets. Later students have made however a couple of adjustments to this unique record. Niebuhr was annoyed in his makes an attempt to transliterate or get well the that means of the phrases. He had nevertheless paved the best way for others to proceed the method of translating the texts. Two such people had been Olav Tychsen of Rostock and Friedrich Miinter of Copenhagen.

Tychsen noticed that within the inscriptions of the Class I, there occurred at irregular intervals, a wedge that inclined diagonally. This he accurately concluded was the dividing signal used to separate phrases. This was a easy however crucial remark. Tychsen then recognized the alphabetic indicators for a, d, u and s, however he failed in his makes an attempt to decipher a complete inscription, maybe as a result of he assumed that the textual content was written through the Parthian dynasty (246 BCE – CE 227).

Working independently, Miinter made the essential deduction that Persepolis was constructed through the Achaemenian period, that’s between 538-465 BCE. He too concluded that the indirect wedge as a word-divider, and in addition recognized the signal for b within the Class I textual content. He additionally famous that sure phrases occured in a brief and lengthy varieties and that one set meant ‘king’ and ‘kings’, i.e., one was a plural type of the opposite, and that when the 2 phrases occurred collectively the expression meant ‘king of kings’.

Each researchers nonetheless didn’t transcend their makes an attempt to decipher Class I texts and due to this fact didn’t take pleasure in cross references of their efforts.

In 1802, German epigraphist Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775 – 1853), inspired by the librarian of Gottingen College, took up the baton of decipherment. He labored on the idea that the three lessons had been three totally different languages, one in all which was Outdated Persian, the language of the Achaemenians. The tactic of decipherment that he used was to position two textual content comparable panels aspect by aspect. Miinter’s quick and lengthy type phrases which he thought meant ‘king’, ‘kings’ and collectively meant ‘king of kings’ additionally appeared in Grotefend’s pattern texts. Grotefend added the remark that the word-sets occurred within the first line in each the samples, and additional that in each samples, they had been adopted by an an identical phrase that he concluded meant ‘nice’ to provide ‘king nice’ or ‘nice king’, a title that was used within the lately deciphered Sassanian inscriptions. He now felt he had the illustration for the phrase ‘nice king, king of kings’. To ensure that his concept to carry, he would wish to point out that this opening phrase can be current within the inscriptions of two totally different kings, that’s, the place the names related to the phrase had been totally different.

Grotefend went on to look at that the opening phrase within the first pattern appeared on the third line of his second pattern in a barely longer type which he hypothesized was within the genitive or possessive case the place the named king was the son of one other king, for example ‘Darius king son’ or ‘son of Darius king’. The primary pattern might due to this fact containing the opening phrase, ‘Darius, nice king, king of kings, son of Hystaspes’, whereas the second pattern might include the phrase ‘Xerxes, nice king, king of kings, son of Darius’. This remark led to a different speculation – that the 2 pattern inscriptions contained the names of three kings, grandfather, father and son, that’s Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes.

Grotefend’s assumption for the Outdated Persian type of Darius was Darheush. Whereas this assumption was not fully appropriate – the proper type was Darayavaush – he might nonetheless make vital progress in unlocking the secrets and techniques of the inscriptions for he was additionally in a position to transliterate the letters d, a, r,r, and sh. A whole decipherment would elude Grotefend, however, he had paved the best way for others to complete this job.

Rasmus Christian Rask (1787-1832, additionally see the reference to Rask in our web page on Western Authors), continued to seek for the important thing or keys that might divulge to the world the secrets and techniques of the inscriptions and at last awake in them the voice that had been silent for thus lengthy. His contribution to the decipherment was to seek out the plural endings.

Outdated Persian cuneiform alphabet. Photos courtesy of Fereydoun Rostam at
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Outdated Persian cuneiform logograms

Outdated Persian cuneiform numbers

Eugene Burnouf (1801-1852, additionally see the reference to Burnouf in our web page on Western Authors), ready in Paris a listing of Persian geographical names discovered within the inscriptions at Naqsh-e-Rustam, and constructed an entire transliteration of the Outdated Persian alphabet.

Syllabic System

Christian Lassen (1800-1876), a Professor at Bonn, additionally ready an identical record and printed his outcomes at about the identical time as Burnouf’s work – in 1836. He argued that utilizing Grotefend’s alphabet, some Outdated Persian can be transliterated as Cprd, Thtgus, Ktptuk,, Fraisjm – with few or no vowels – leaving them unpronounceable. Lassen who hd studied Sanskrit, used this information to make an important remark – that the traditional Outdated Persian indicators for consonants had been syllabic with vowels hooked up to the consonants. As an example, the character for b might signify the syllables ba. bi, and bu. He postulated that the signal for the vowel a was solely used originally of a phrase, earlier than a consonant, or earlier than one other vowel, and that in each different case it was included within the consonant signal. Thus v-z-r-k ought to learn vazaraka.

The Outdated Persian Cuneiform script because it was ultimately deciphered consisted of of thirty-six alphabet-syllables indicators, and eight ideograms for the phrases ‘king’, ‘nation’ (two ideograms) ‘good’, ‘God’, ‘earth’, and ‘Ahuramazda’ (3x). As well as, a slanting wedge () is used as a phrase divider and there are a number of symbols for numbers which might be counted utilizing a base of ten.

Henry Creswicke Rawlinson

The stage was now set for a younger British military officer and Orientalist, Henry Rawlinson (1810 – 1895), to finish the method of unlocking the secrets and techniques of the Outdated Persian inscriptions, of which these authored by Darius I had been amongst essentially the most prolific. In 1827, on the age of seventeen, he went to India as a officer cadet below the British East India Firm. There he spent six years as a subaltern and used the chance to be taught Persian and several other of Indian vernacular languages. In 1833, the younger Rawlinson left for Persia, to assist with the coaching and reorganization of the Persian military.

Whereas stationed within the Hamadan, Rawlinson was drawn to the Behistun monument, and in 1835 studied the inscriptions utilizing a field-glass and used his notes and drawings to start out his strategy of deciphering the inscriptions. Since he couldn’t copy the entire inscriptions utilizing this course of, in 1837, he scaled the rocks to succeed in the monument and replica the Outdated Persian portion of the monument’s inscription. For the reason that Elamite inscription was throughout a large cleft within the rock, and since Babylonian inscription was about 4 meters above the ledge on the base of the inscriptions, Rawlinson couldn’t make a replica of those parts of the inscriptions at the moment. We have no idea to what extent he had entry Burnouf’s Outdated Persian syllables or Lassen work, however Rawlinson nonetheless accomplished a decipherment of the primary two paragraphs of the Outdated Persian inscriptions by 1838, and offered his outcomes, together with the title, titles and family tree of Darius, on March 14, 1838 to the Royal Asiatic Society in London and within the following month to the Socit Asiatique in Paris, securing him an honorary membership in that august physique.

After his shows to the Asiatic Societies , he acquired or procured copies of all of the European publications of the topic together with the works of Burnouf, Niebuhr, le Brun and Porter. His work on the inscriptions now made speedy progress and within the winter of 1838-1839 his Outdated-Persian alphabet and syllables was nearly full.

Example of a translation of a Behistun inscription fragment

Behistun inscription fragment translation instance. Picture courtesy of Fereydoun Rostam at
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In an article printed in a 1839 version of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (x. pp. 5, 6) he wrote of his methodology he employed in deciphering the textual content of the inscriptions. ” Once I proceeded… to match and interline the 2 inscriptions (or reasonably the Persian columns of the 2 inscriptions, for, because the compartments exhibiting the inscription within the Persian language occupied the principal place within the tablets, and had been engraved within the least difficult of the three lessons of cuneiform writing, they had been naturally first submitted to examination) I discovered that the characters coincided all through, besides in sure specific teams, and it was solely affordable to suppose that the grounds which had been thus introduced out and individualized should signify correct names. I additional remarked that there have been however three of those distinct teams within the two inscriptions; for the group which occupied the second place in a single inscription, and which, from its place, instructed the concept of its representing the title of the daddy of the king who was there commemorated, corresponded with the group which occupied the primary place within the different inscription, and thus not solely served determinately to attach the 2 inscriptions collectively, however, assuming the teams to signify correct names, appeared additionally to point a genealogical succession. The pure inference was that in these three teams of characters I had obtained the correct names belonging to 3 consecutive generations of the Persian monarchy; and it so occurred that the primary three names of Hystaspes, Darius and Xerxes, which I utilized at hazard to the three teams, in keeping with the succession, proved to reply in all respects satisfactorily and had been, in actual fact, the true identification.”

1839 noticed Rawlinson stationed in Bagdad. He had supposed to publish his preliminary memoir within the spring of 1840, when he acquired phrase of his switch to Afghanistan as a political agent stationed at Kandahar. That work so occupied his time that he couldn’t dedicate himself to finishing his research till his return to Baghdad in 1843. There he acquired up to date copies of the Persepolis inscriptions made by Westergaard. Later in 1843(?) he returned to Behistun to be able to copy these texts that had hitherto been past his attain. In 1846, he printed within the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, his memoirs on the traditional Persian inscriptions that included at nearly full translation of the Behistun texts.

In 1846, Rev. Edward Hincks of Killyleagh, County Down, Eire, offered and skim a paper earlier than the Royal Irish Academy. The paper included criticisms of Lassen’s work and the transliteration of the Outdated Persian alphabet-syllables.

In 1844 by Niels Louis Westergaard, printed an essay on the decipherment of the second language (later recognized to be Elamite / Susian within the trilingual inscriptions. On this job, Westergard employed a way much like the one utilized by Grotefend within the decipherment of Outdated Persian. He chosen names corresponding to Darius and Hystaspes, and in contrast them with their equivalents within the Outdated Persian texts. He referred to as the language Median and categorized it in “the Scythian, reasonably than within the Japhetic household.” He estimated the variety of its characters at eighty-two or eighty-seven and concluded that the writing was partly alphabetic and partly syllabic, conclusions that had been criticised by Hincks.

One other researcher, de Saulcy, made additional advances however was hampered by the inaccuracy of the copied texts. Edwin Norris, based mostly his research on Rawlinson’s extra correct copies of the Behistun inscriptions, and printed his leads to 1852 in a paper offered to the Royal Asiatic Society. Later, Mordtmann recognized the second language as Susian (Elamite).

The decipherment of the third of the three languages discovered at Persepolis and Behistun adopted the decipherment of the Elamite texts. Researchers, Isadore Lowenstern, Hincks (in 1846 and 1847) and Longperier (in 1847) made vital advances. Then in 1851, Rawlinson introduced the method to fruition when he printed his transliteration in Roman characters, in addition to his translation of 100 and twelve traces of Behistun’s Babylonian textual content column into Latin.

A few of the translations of the Behistun inscriptions embody these by:
– L. W. King and R. C. Thompson, who led an expedition sponsored by the British Museum, and titled The Sculptures and Inscription of Darius the Nice on the Rock of Behistun in Persia (1907 London),
– Herbert Cushing Tolman and printed by Vanderbilt College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1908.

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