El software Eprints

Persian belongs to the south-western group of Iranian languages which is a subcategory of the Indo-Iranian language group. Modern Persian is descended from Middle Persian, which in turn descended from Old Persian. The wider languages of Iran can be divided into three main sections: Old Iranian, Middle Iranian and Modern Iranian. These roughly correspond to the Achaemenid period (558-330 BCE), the Sasanid era (224-651 CE) and the modern Islamic period (Skjaervo, 2009; Windfuhr, 2009). The geographical area covered by the languages within these three groups has stayed relatively consistent, though as Kent notes “at all periods there have been islands of non-Iranian speech within it [the approximate area of Iranian speakers], and islands of Iranian speech outside it.” (Kent, 1953, p.6) The area covered by the Iranian languages of all periods, relates approximately to the Iranian Plateau. There are two main languages within the group of languages under the heading Old Iranian: Old Persian and Avestan. There are also numerous other languages belonging to the same group, the most significant of which was Median (R. G. Kent, 1936, p. 7). The other languages in the group include: Sogdian, Sakan (Scythian), Carduchi, and Parthian. Old Persian (525BCE – 330 BCE) refers to the language of Southwest Persia (in particular Persis) and relates specifically to the language found in the cuneiform inscriptions. Kent referred to Old Persian as “the vernacular speech of the Archaemenian rulers.” (R. G. Kent, 1936, p. 6). Old Persian is believed to be the main root of Middle Persian, which later led onto Modern Persian. It was written in Old Persian Cuneiform script which was predominantly written on clay using a reed. This creates the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions which gave cuneiform its name. The cuneiform script evolved from pictographic script of the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia into a form of semi-alphabetic syllabary, this required far fewer

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lines. The German philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775 - 1853) contributed significantly to the translating of Old Persian cuneiform. He made significant early steps to understanding and hence deciphering the script. His work was expanded upon by Christian Lassen and George Rawlinson among others. Old Persian was the first cuneiform script to be translated and as Grotefend predicted, it held the key to the deciphering of other languages written in cuneiform. There are some surviving examples of the language, mostly from the time of Darius and his son Xerxes (522-465 B.C). As can be seen in the artefacts like the Tablet of Persepolis or the Daiva inspription of Xerxes the inscriptions were often accompanied by translations in both Elamite and Akkadian or Babylonian, which used a different form of cuneiform script. Old Persian was also, occasionally, accompanied by translations in the hieroglyphic languages of Egyptian and Aramaic. The language shows features of the south-west Iranian dialect, for example a change in palatal stops more congruent with south-west Iranian dialects than other Iranian languages. Morphologically the number of cases was reduced from eight to six, as the dative form was merged into the genitive, and the instrumental and ablative forms also joined together. There were three genders; masculine, feminine and neuter, and nouns, adjectives and pronouns distinguished between three levels of plurality; singular, dual or plural.

Avestan is known purely through Zoroastrian scripture. Zoroastrianism is a religion which follows the teaching of the prophet Zarathustra, also known as Zoroaster. The main collection of religious Zoroastrian texts is the Avesta, which demonstrates various varieties of Avestan. These different varieties can be split into Old Avestan and Young Avestan; Young Avestan can in turn be split into further subsections Old Young Avestan and Late Young Avestan. It is believed that the Avestan texts represent only a small fragment of the Avestan language, which was based predominantly on oral traditions with texts being remembered by specially trained priests and some of these traditions being transferred to writing during the Sasanian Period. Avestan was linguistically similar to Old Persian, indicating their shared roots. Khanlari relates this to them having been “the dialects of the same Old Iranian language with minor variations” (Khanlari, 1979, p. 163). However, Middle Persian generally acknowledged as descending most directly from Old Persian.

The term Middle Persian covers the Iranian languages from approximately 300 B.C. to 900 A.D., including the official languages of the Arsacid and Sasanian dynasties: Arsacid Pahlavi and Southwest or Sasnian Pahlavi respectively. Middle Persian is also referred to as Pahlavi which is a direct derivative of the Old Persian word Parθava or ‘Parthian’ (Kent, 1953). It is

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written in the Aramaic-based Pahlavi script. Arsacid Pahlavi survived longer than the Arsacid dynasty, though later versions were often referred to as Parthian, or Chaldeao-Pahlavi. Pahlavi is also known as the language of the Sasnians (Williams, 2009) as the Sasnian dynasty made it the official language of Iran. There are strong indicators that Sasnian Pahlavi was derived from Old Persian. Williams (2009) notes, that one of the most significant features of Pahlavi is that its orthography incorporates both Iranian and Semitic words, even though the phonetic background is predominantly Iranian. This led to Book Pahlavi (a form of written Pahlavi most commonly associated with Zoroastrian religious texts) comprising almost equal portions of Aramaic heterograms and Iranian eteograms (Williams, 2009, p. 827).