Tag: Old Persian

Categories
Articles

The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian

Gentile, Simone. 2024. The ezāfe-like construction in Old Iranian: A reassessment. Ricerche Linguistiche 1.

This paper addresses the origins of the (proto-)ezāfe in Old Iranian, challenging traditional analyses that have classified the ‘ezāfe’-like structures in Avestan and Old Persian as adjectival formations. This hypothesis is primarily based on the case agreement between the relative pronoun and the head noun. This paper presents
an alternative interpretation, proposing that these constructions should be viewed as relative clauses (RCs) with omitted copulas. From this perspective, the omission of the copula triggers the so-called attractio relativi, a phenomenon observed in various Indo-European languages, thus challenging prior claims. The idea that
RCs may have served as precursors to the Persian ezāfe and potentially contributed to the formation of definite articles in some Middle Eastern Iranian languages remains compelling. However, in earlier stages, these structures are best understood as reduced RCs, lacking an explicit copula.

Abstract
Categories
Articles

New remarks on §70 of the Bisotun Inscription

Fattori, Marco. 2024. New epigraphic and exegetical remarks on paragraph 70 of the Bisotun inscription, Old Persian version (DB/OP IV ll. 88–92). Ricerche Linguistiche 1. 105–133.

The preprint of the article is available from the author’s Academia page.

This paper aims to provide a new edition of paragraph 70 of the Old Persian version of the Bisotun inscription (DB/OP IV ll. 88-92). Although this badly preserved passage received an enormous scholarly attention, only a few researchers could directly examine the inscription, and their editions differ significantly from one another. In absence of good published photographs, it is currently impossible to critically evaluate the reliability of these editions and propose new readings based on a first-hand inspection of the stone. To overcome this inconvenience, this article includes a full photographic documentation of the passage and a detailed discussion of each reading. Since this new examination of the inscription resulted in the improvement of several readings, the edition is followed by a commentary where a possible interpretation of the newly read words is offered.

Abstract
Categories
Books

The Old Persian Inscriptions

Schmitt, Rüdiger. 2023. Die altpersischen Inschriften der Achaimeniden: Editio minor mit deutscher Übersetzung. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.

In this book may be found a complete edition and German translation of the Old Persian texts of the mostly trilingual cuneiform inscriptions of the Persian kings from the Achaemenid dynasty. Only the minor corpora of vase inscriptions and those on seals and weights are passed over, because they are of only narrow historical meaning. The edition presents the transliterated and the transcribed texts in two columns next to each other and beneath them succinct annotations and the translation respectively, which tries to render the original wording as literally as possible. The book starts with a list of all the Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions (also those written not in Old Persian script and language), that describes the texts in outline and includes the literature relevant for constituting and translating the texts in question.

Categories
Articles

Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana

Fattori, Marco. 2023. Miscellanea Epigraphica Susiana. Textual Observations on some Achaemenid Inscriptions from Susa. Arta 2023.003.

This article presents some new philological observations on three Achaemenid texts from Susa (DSe, DSi, A2Se) based on a new inspection of the inscriptions. These include the edition of previously unpublished fragments and the attribution of previously misplaced fragments to the texts under examination. For each inscription, a brief epigraphic, philological and linguistic commentary is provided.

Categories
Articles

Servant or Slave

Sheikh, Hossein. 2023. Servant or slave: The Old Persian words Bandaka, Marika and Daha and their cognates in Middle Iranian languages. In: Jeannine Bischoff, Stephan Conermann and Marion Gymnich (eds.), Naming, defining, phrasing strong asymmetrical dependencies: A textual approach, 55-67. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

In this paper, I will briefly examine the concept of superiority/inferiority in the Achaemenid administrative system in particular and in the ancient Iranian world in general. In doing so, I will focus on the word bandaka, its meanings and its nuance in Iranian languages in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture, as this word plays a very important role in the definition of terminology related to slavery and associated terms in the Iranian world. In addition, I will discuss two additional words related to this topic that shed more light on the concept of superiority/inferiority in Ancient Iranian societies. Our main sources for this study are inscriptions, letters and contracts from a variety of Western and Central Asian cultures. In this study, I chose three Middle Iranian languages, Sogdian, Pahlavi, and Bactrian, because the geography in which these languages were spoken was a part of the Achaemenid Empire.

Categories
Articles

A Portuguese edition of the Behistun Inscription (Old Persian text)

Treuk Medeiros de Araujo, Matheus. 2023. A inscrição de Behistun (c. 520 a.C.): tradução do texto Persa Antigo para o Português, introdução crítica e comentários. Revista de História 182, 1-35.

The monumental Achaemenid inscription at mount Behistun (Bisitun), in the Iranian province of Kermanshah (western Iran), reports the official version of Darius’ accession to power in Ancient Persia. Written in three languages and scripts (Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian), this invaluable historical document was vital to the decipherment of the cuneiform script in the 19th century. It also enabled the reconstruction of the Achaemenid Empire’s history, previously known to us mainly through the accounts of Greek and biblical sources. Due to the importance and uniqueness of the Behistun Inscription, we propose the translation of the Old Persian text directly to the Portuguese language, providing wider access to the document for specialized and non-specialized audiences. Historical commentaries approaching the most important debates associated with the inscription also follow the text.

Categories
Books

Towards a Morphosyntax of Old Persian Cases

Benvenuto, Maria Carmela & Flavia Pompeo. 2020. Towards a morphosyntax of Old Persian cases : The genitive (Indogermanische Textlinguistik, Poetik und Stilistik 3). Hamburg: Baar-Verlag.

To date, there has been no comprehensive study specifically devoted to the syntax or morphosyntax of Old Persian cases. The authors of the present work have decided to remedy this with a study regarding an Old Persian case that from various viewpoints is not only the most complex, but also the most interesting: the genitive. Progressing from traditional approaches, the authors analyze the Old Persian genitive adopting both semasiological and onomasiological methods. Through a semasiological approach, emphasis is placed on case functions as well as on the constructions in which the genitive case is implied and the various meanings that they convey. Through an onomasiological approach, a given semantic/functional domain, such as ditransitive constructions and expressions of possession, is investigated, and the relevant alternating constructions are analyzed.

Thanks to this integrated methodology, the new monograph in the Indo-European Text Linguistics, Poetics and Stylistics series will be of great interest to specialists in Old Iranian philology and comparative-historical Indo-European linguistics as well as to scholars working in the fields of general linguistics (morphosyntax) and linguistic typology.

To see the ToC, click here.

Categories
Books

Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology

Bianconi, Michele, Marta Capano, Domenica Romagno & Francesco Rovai (eds.). 2022. Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology: Contact, Variation, and Reconstruction (Brill’s Studies in Historical Linguistics, 18). Leiden: Brill.

Studying the Indo-European languages means having a privileged viewpoint on diachronic language change, because of their relative wealth of documentation, which spans over more than three millennia with almost no interruption, and their cultural position that they have enjoyed in human history.

The chapters in this volume investigate case-studies in several ancient Indo-European languages (Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite, Luwian, Sanskrit, Avestan, Old Persian, Armenian, Albanian) through the lenses of contact, variation, and reconstruction, in an interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary way. This reveals at the same time the multiplicity and the unity of our discipline(s), both by showing what kind of results the adoption of modern theories on “old” material can yield, and by underlining the centrality and complexity of the text in any research related to ancient languages.

Continue reading “Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology”
Categories
Books

A Relative Chronology of Persian

Korn, Agnes. 2021. Contributions to a relative chronology of Persian: The non-change of postconsonantal y and w in Middle Persian in context. Indo-European Linguistics 1–43.

Old Persian shows a change of postconsonantal y, w to iy, uw, respectively. However, if one applies (pre-)Middle Persian sound changes to the Old Persian forms, the result is at variance with certain Middle Persian forms. If one were to assume a syncope reversing the Old Persian change of y, w to iy, uw, this would also affect old cases of iy, uw and likewise yield incorrect results for Middle Persian. The Old Persian change can thus not have operated in the prehistory of Middle Persian, and there is a dialectal difference between attested Old Persian and the later stages of the language, which is to be added to those already noted. The paper also discusses some sound changes that are connected to the Old Persian change in one way or the other. Cases in point are the processes called Epenthesis and Umlaut in previous scholarship, which this article suggests to interpret as occurring in different contexts and in different periods. The former is limited to Vry, which yields Vir and feeds into a monophthongisation that, as shown by some late Old Persian word forms, occurred within Achaemenid times, giving ēr and īr from ary and əry. Epenthesis did not occur in the prehistory of Parthian, whereas the monophthongisation did. The Appendix presents a tentative sequence of the processes discussed in this article, which is intended as a contribution to the relative chronology of Persian historical phonology.

Categories
Books

From Aṣ̌ǝm Vohū to Dareios’ Inscription

Oettinger, Norbert, Stefan Schaffner & Thomas Steer (eds.). 2020. “Denken Sie einfach!”: Gedenkschrift für Karl Hoffmann (Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 30). Dettelbach: Verlag J.H. Röll.

Two chapters of the edited Gedenkschrift-volume for Karl Hoffmann are for special intrest of the study of Avestan and Old Persian:

  • Kellens, Jean. 2020. L’Aṣ̌ǝm Vohū entre Gâthâs et Visprad, 113–121.
  • Schmitt, Rüdiger. 2020. Dareios’ Inschrift „DPd“ – Gebet, Dichtung, in metrischer Form? , 235–254.