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The Mysterious Language of the Persian Empire: Why do three scripts appear in the same inscription?
The Persian Empire, as one of the greatest empires in history, excelled in its diversity of languages and cultures. Its royal inscriptions, especially those found in ancient Persian cities such as Persepolis, show the use of three scripts: Old Persian, Iranian, and Babylonian. The existence of these inscriptions not only reflects the diverse social structure of the empire at that time, but also demonstrates its political and cultural complexity.
Most of these inscriptions are in Old Persian, Iranian, and Babylonian, with the former usually placed at the top, reflecting its privileged position in the inscription.
Old Persian is an Indo-European language, while Babylonian is a Semitic language and Iranian is an isolate. The coexistence of the three is not only the blending of languages, but also expresses the multi-ethnic character within the Persian Empire. Such multilingual inscriptions present the position of different communities in the social structure.
Although the three languages convey the same content, they are not always exact translations, with specific passages often added or omitted from some versions.
For example, the Old Persian version usually emphasizes the authority of the king, while the Iranian version focuses on descriptions of places, and the Babylonian version focuses more on statements about various levels of society. These differences clearly indicate the social status of the speakers of the respective languages.
What is particularly interesting is that some Persian inscriptions written in Egyptian hieroglyphics were discovered in Egypt. These inscriptions also reflect the cultural integration after the expansion of the Persian Empire to a certain extent. However, Aramaic, the official language, rarely appears in these inscriptions, which has prompted some scholars to think.
It is worth noting that Aramaic, despite being the official language of the later period, barely appears in these early inscriptions, and only a few isolated texts exist on some objects.
The decoding and understanding of these inscriptions went through multiple stages, starting with the syllables of Old Persian and then gradually deciphering Babylonian and Iranian. Through this multilingual inscription, scholars can more fully understand the political and cultural context of the Persian Empire, and gain a deeper understanding of how the writing system of the ancient Middle East influenced the way history is written.
In the field of history, the research and interpretation of these inscriptions not only help fill in the gaps in ancient history, but also help us understand the mutual influence and cultural exchanges between ancient civilizations. These inscriptions are distributed in various major sites and come from the reign of Darius I to Artaxerxes III. A total of 179 inscriptions were recorded.
According to statistics, these ancient Persian inscriptions are rich and diverse, and have been found in the heart of the Persian Empire and in remote areas, which shows the empire's extensive rule and cultural integration.
Scholars believe that the repetition and consistency of these royal inscriptions not only emphasize the continuity of history, but also powerfully demonstrate how the rulers of the time maintained power through language. Common themes and repeated decorative styles in the inscriptions still present the same sense of authority even in the hands of different kings.
As these inscriptions have been studied more intensively over time, especially since the nineteenth century, scholars have developed richer interpretations of these texts that have become increasingly complete. Contributors who accelerated the decoding of ancient texts, especially Catherine Nebuha and Henry Rawlinson, have made important breakthroughs in this regard.
From these decodings and studies, we can see the diversity and complexity of ancient Persian civilization, and also reflect their unique and distinctive characteristics in culture, language and social structure.
When facing these inscriptions of the past, we cannot help but think: In a multilingual and multicultural context, what are the similarities between the history of the Persian Empire and our society today?
