# Old Persian (cuneiform) words in Modern Persian



## Delvo

I've been looking at the Old Persian cuneiform in the "king introduction" sections of a couple of Old Persian inscriptions that were important in the process of deciphering cuneiform (because they followed a familiar formula and contained names & words that were known in other languages).

One says "Darius, the great king, king of kings, king of nations, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid..." and the other says "Xerxes, the great king, king of kings, son of King Darius, an Achaemenid...". I can easily find Modern Persian, Aramaic, Greek, and/or Avestan spellings of the names and the words for "king" and "Achaemenid". But "great", "of", "countries", "son of", and "an" are not so simple.

For "great", the cuneiform sounds are "v-z-r-k". I found Modern Persian بزرگ. Is that the modern form of the same word?

For "countries", the cuneiform sounds are "d-h-y-u". I found Modern Persian دهات ("countryside" according to Google Translate) and ده ("village" according to Google Translate). Are those the modern forms of the same word?

For "son of", the Cuneiform sounds are "h-y-a", and it's a suffix attached to the father's name instead of a separate word, like the "-son" in English names like "Richardson". Another Cuneiform suffix is "n-a-m", which gets attached to a word for something that a king is the king of, so it equates to "of" ("of countries" = "dhyunam", "of kings" = "xšayaθiyanam"). And the Cuneiform word which gets translated as "an" in "an Achaemenid" is "p-u-ç". I haven't found a Modern Persian word resembling any of these for similar meanings. Did they get replaced with other words sometime between Old Persian and Modern Persian?


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## Derakhshan

d-a-r-y-v-u-š : x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y :
v-z-r-k : x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y : x-š-a-/y-ϑ-i-y-a-n-a-m
: x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y :
d-h-y-u-n-a-m : vi-i-š-t-a-s-p-h-y-/a
: p-u-ç : h-x-a-m-n-i-š-i-y : h-/y
: i-m-a-m : t-c-r-m : a-ku-u-n-u-š

_Dārayavauš xšāyaθiya 
vazạrka xšāyaθiya xšāyaθiyānām 
xšāyaθiya 
dahạyūnām Vištāspahạyā 
puça Haxāmanišiya haya 
imām tacaram akunauš_

Darius, the king
great, king of kings,
king
of countries, Hystaspes'
son, an Achaemenid, who
built this palace.



Delvo said:


> For "great", the cuneiform sounds are "v-z-r-k". I found Modern Persian بزرگ. Is that the modern form of the same word?


Yes



Delvo said:


> For "countries", the cuneiform sounds are "d-h-y-u". I found Modern Persian دهات ("countryside" according to Google Translate) and ده ("village" according to Google Translate). Are those the modern forms of the same word?


Old Persian _dahạyū- > _Middle Persian_ deh > _New Persian _dih/deh._ In New Persian today it means "village".  دهات has the Arabic plural ending.

But the inscription says _xšāyaθiya dahạyūnām _which means "king of countries", where _dahạyūnām _means "of countries" (genitive plural).



Delvo said:


> For "son of", the Cuneiform sounds are "h-y-a",


_Vištāspahạyā puça _(vi-i-š-t-a-s-p-h-y-/a : p-u-ç) is "Hystaspes' son". _Vištāspahạyā _is the genitive of _Vištāspa_.

_haya _is a relative pronoun "who"._ haya imām tacaram akunauš _"who built this place".



Delvo said:


> Another Cuneiform suffix is "n-a-m", which gets attached to a word for something that a king is the king of, so it equates to "of" ("of countries" = "dhyunam", "of kings" = "xšayaθiyanam")


That's the Old Persian plural genitive-dative ending -_ānām_, which becomes -_ūnām _in _u_-stem nouns.



Delvo said:


> And the Cuneiform word which gets translated as "an" in "an Achaemenid" is "p-u-ç"


That means "son" and is پسر in New Persian.

There is no word for "an". Old Persian had no articles.


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## Massad

"That [ie "p-u-ç"] means "son" and is پسر in New Persian."


Could it be the modern Persian پور?


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## fdb

Massad said:


> "That [ie "p-u-ç"] means "son" and is پسر in New Persian."
> 
> 
> Could it be the modern Persian پور?


Indo-Iranian putra- > Old Iranian puϑra- > Old Persian puça- > Middle Persian pus, with the oblique case pusar (New Persian pisar) by analogy to -r stem words like pid, pidar “father”.

pūr is a non-Persian dialect form from puhr from the same puϑra-.


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## Delvo

Derakhshan said:


> _Vištāspahạyā puça _(vi-i-š-t-a-s-p-h-y-/a : p-u-ç) is "Hystaspes' son". _Vištāspahạyā _is the genitive of _Vištāspa_.
> 
> _haya _is a relative pronoun "who"._ haya imām tacaram akunauš _"who built this place".


So the genitive suffix and the word for "who" look & sound the same... does this still exist with the same meanings in the modern language?



Derakhshan said:


> That's the Old Persian plural genitive-dative ending -_ānām_, which becomes -_ūnām _in _u_-stem nouns.


Does this still exist with the same meaning in the modern language? (I'm interested in what the people deciphering cuneiform were up against; any of these little operational words that have changed or been lost since then would have made the decipherment one step harder, and any that are still the same would have made it one step easier.)



Derakhshan said:


> That means "son" and is پسر in New Persian.
> 
> There is no word for "an". Old Persian had no articles.


Interesting... I had suspected it would turn out to be not an article but an adjective or preposition, but that was still breaking up the phrases the wrong way because of somehow expecting "son of" to be just a suffix instead of a suffix plus another word.


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## Delvo

Derakhshan said:


> the inscription says _xšāyaθiya dahạyūnām _which means "king of countries", where _dahạyūnām _means "of countries" (genitive plural).





Derakhshan said:


> That's the Old Persian plural genitive-dative ending -_ānām_, which becomes -_ūnām _in _u_-stem nouns.


So OP "dahay(u?)" was a u-stem? Did it have a "u" at the end even when this particular suffix was not attached?


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## Delvo

Delvo said:


> ...does this still exist with the same meaning in the modern language?





Delvo said:


> Does this still exist with the same meaning in the modern language?



Same thing again for the "aθa" and "iya" that are built in to the word for "king" after the root that equates to modern "shah"...


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## Dib

Delvo said:


> So the genitive suffix and the word for "who" look & sound the same... does this still exist with the same meanings in the modern language?


Well, the final vowel was different - long ā in the genitive marker vs. short a (plus maybe an unwritten h thereafter) for the relative pronoun. The genitive singular ending did not survive into modern Persian. But, the word for "who" did. It is the source of the modern ezāfe vowel -i/e. So, the syntax of the phrases like "ketāb-e man" and "ketāb-e khub" derive from structures which historically meant "the book, which is mine" and "the book, which is good".



Delvo said:


> Does this still exist with the same meaning in the modern language? (I'm interested in what the people deciphering cuneiform were up against; any of these little operational words that have changed or been lost since then would have made the decipherment one step harder, and any that are still the same would have made it one step easier.)


The genitive plural -ānām is the source of modern plural -ān. While the decipherment was anything but simple, remember that modern Persian was not the primary point of comparison for those scholars. They had Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions with similar phraseology, and Sanskrit and Avestan for grammatical comparisons. Old Persian was very close in grammar to both of the last two.



Delvo said:


> So OP "dahay(u?)" was a u-stem? Did it have a "u" at the end even when this particular suffix was not attached?


Yes. From Tolman's Old Persian dictionary:






Delvo said:


> Same thing again for the "aθa" and "iya" that are built in to the word for "king" after the root that equates to modern "shah"...


It's the whole word xšāyaθiya that evolved into modern šāh. The h in particular is the continuation of the θ.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> They had Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions with similar phraseology, and Sanskrit and Avestan for grammatical comparisons. Old Persian was very close in grammar to both of the last two.


Does this then mean, in less than 400 years (end of Achaemenids to start of Parthian), OP changed, fairly extensively, to MP yet MP didn't change a whole lot till the appearance of NP i.e. 600-700 years later and NP hasn't change much in a 1000 years?

I am sure there's convincing evidence for this fairly radical change (OP->MP) in such a short time.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> remember that modern Persian was not the primary point of comparison for those scholars


Ok let's assume those scholars didn't have access to NP, which is hard to believe, has there been newer studies since then to try and explore OP to remove some of the ambiguous cases rather than leave them mid-air?


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> Does this then mean, in less than 400 years (end of Achaemenids to start of Parthian), OP changed, fairly extensively, to MP yet MP didn't change a whole lot till the appearance of NP i.e. 600-700 years later and NP hasn't change much in a 1000 years?


Not necessarily. We have talked about this before, and I don't have the energy and familiarity with the tiny details, that's necessary to paint an exact picture (I know the broad outlines of the changes), to go into it again. Just to recap the main points:

1) Once an orthography is established, the written language often changes much more slowly than the spoken. It often looks like a large linguistic jump when that writing culture is broken and a new one is established. Old to Middle English is also a parallel case study. It does not necessarily mean that the spoken language also had such an abrupt jump.

2) Additionally, languages (i.e. spoken languages) do also show periods of relative stability and periods of relatively quick changes. It's called punctuated equilibrium.

There is no reason to assume that the history of Persian would not show these tendencies.



PersoLatin said:


> I am sure there's convincing evidence for this fairly radical change (OP->MP) in such a short time.


How about the inscriptions themselves? Like, Derakhshan has transliterated for us Darius' Persepolis inscription a (DPa in literature):



Derakhshan said:


> d-a-r-y-v-u-š : x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y :
> v-z-r-k : x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y : x-š-a-/y-ϑ-i-y-a-n-a-m
> : x-š-a-y-ϑ-i-y :
> d-h-y-u-n-a-m : vi-i-š-t-a-s-p-h-y-/a
> : p-u-ç : h-x-a-m-n-i-š-i-y : h-/y
> : i-m-a-m : t-c-r-m : a-ku-u-n-u-š


See how much grammar you can decode with Middle (and New) Persian alone without reference to Avestan and Sanskrit.

Derakhshan has also provided a reconstructed phonetic transcription, which you may ignore if you like, but be careful with changing the translation. Achaemenid inscriptions usually come in triplets - with Babylonian and Elamite versions as well. You need to make sure that the three translations are consistent. I am not sure if DPa itself has Babylonian and Elamite versions, but you get the general idea.

Btw, this transliteration has (at least) one mistake. In the last line, it should be ": i-m-m :" (transcription: imam, not imām) and I noticed it - guess how? Because my Sanskrit knowledge tells me that it was unexpected. So, I checked, and lo and behold!
DPa - Livius
(They use a slightly different transliteration - adding a after the consonant signs unspecified for vowels. But they have a photograph of the real thing as well. So ... )



PersoLatin said:


> Ok let's assume those scholars didn't have access to NP, which is hard to believe, has there been newer studies since then to try and explore OP to remove some of the ambiguous cases rather than leave them mid-air?


We don't need to assume anything so absurd. You use the evidence from wherever you can get it. It just happens that other language (stage-)s are more helpful in understanding how Old Persian "works", like I could detect something as unexpected in Derakhshan's transliteration using my knowledge of Sanskrit rather than NP. Thanks to these other languages, figuring out the mechanism of OP was a bit easier than it would be if we only had NP to go by. That was the point of my saying this:


Dib said:


> While the decipherment was anything but simple, remember that modern Persian was not the primary point of comparison for those scholars. They had Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions with similar phraseology, and Sanskrit and Avestan for grammatical comparisons.


while addressing this point:


Delvo said:


> (I'm interested in what the people deciphering cuneiform were up against; any of these little operational words that have changed or been lost since then would have made the decipherment one step harder, and any that are still the same would have made it one step easier.)



However, in any case, I am also interested to find if there are some points on which New Persian can improve our understanding of OP above and beyond what we get from comparison with MP, Av and Skt. Not being an expert in the relevant field, I unfortunately don't have a definitive answer.

---

For a point of comparison, in the Standard model of OP grammar, as established mainly on the basis of comparison with Sanskrit and Avestan, the only two bits of grammar in DPa without exact parallels in Av and Skt are:

1) : h-y : The masculine singular relative pronoun. However, all its forms are still more or less historically explainable assuming that OP blended the inherited demonstrative (Skt. sa-, Av. ha-) with the inherited relative pronoun (Skt./Av. ya-). In fact, the blend does exist in Sanskrit (sya-) as well, but it works as another demonstrative there rather than as a relative pronoun like in OP, and its exact form is slightly different from the OP form in some cases, e.g. neuter singular Skt. tyat cannot parallel the actual existing OP t-y. Expectation would be ϑ-y.

2) : a-ku-u-n-u-š : (He/she/it) did. From Skt and Av perspective, here also the form roughly looks like a blend of two forms - aorist and imperfect - two kinds of past tenses in these languages. To be exact, as if a sigmatic aorist made from the imperfective stem.

Every other bit of grammar in DPa is exactly the same as Skt/Av within the scope of regular sound changes and script conventions, e.g. the noun/pronoun endings -u-š, -a/u-n-a-m, -h-y-a, -m as well as the apparent endingless forms and their syntactic roles. If NP can improve any understanding here, I'll be very surprised!


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## Derakhshan

Dib said:


> Btw, this transliteration has (at least) one mistake. In the last line, it should be ": i-m-m :" (transcription: imam, not imām)



I took the transcription from TITUS' Old Persian corpus, which apparently rejoins words split across lines (I guess for legibility), and in the process of doing this, it seems they made a mistake. It is indeed <i-m-m>, as the original inscription shows. Thanks!


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## Derakhshan

For those curious about the decipherment process, why not read the actual book written by the man who deciphered it?

Royal Asiatic Society; The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated, with a Memoir of Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in General and on that of Behistun in Particular : Rawlinson, H. C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

It is clear from skimming through it that knowledge of Sanskrit and Avestan ("Zend") played the most important role in its decipherment, but he also references New Persian wherever he can.


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## PersoLatin

Derakhshan said:


> It is clear from skimming through it that knowledge of Sanskrit and Avestan ("Zend") played the most important role in its decipherment, but he also references New Persian wherever he can.


Thanks for this.

A question, is it possible that OP did not reflect the spoken language of the time and was specifically devised for royal decrees by Zoroastrian priests who were experts in Avestan?


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## Dib

"Possible" - sure! But a better question would probably be if it was "probable".

Now, OP has differences from Av as well, e.g. d-s-t- (hand) vs. Av. zasta-, d-a-n- (to know) vs. Av. zan-, etc. which show that the OP base-dialect is of the "Persian-type". So, can it be a made-up language with Persian vocabulary and Avestan grammar? Well, in grammar also it has important differences from Av, like I mentioned two above. But there are more. It is often possible to understand these divergent forms in reference to Avestan, Sanskrit, etc. but they are not identical to them. So, the grammar cannot be a copy of Avestan. The most parsimonious explanation seems to be that the grammar comes from the same dialect as where basic words like _hand _and _know _come from. Is it 100% proven? I'd say, there is no 100% certainty in any historical reconstruction. But this seems to be the most reasonable scenario.

If you do want to speculate, there is another scenario that may be interesting. So, in OP there are words which do not seem to be from the same dialect as where words like _hand _and _know _come from. One interesting example is _horse _- which is attested in two forms: a-s- vs. a-s-p- (the second one mostly in compound names). Conventionally, this other dialect is identified as "Median", the supposed language of the previous empire, with many word-forms same/similar to Avestan, e.g. Av. aspa- (horse)*. So, maybe what we call OP is really just Median with a strong Persian substrate? Note, we have no direct attestation of Median - therefore, very little independent knowledge of it, especially its grammar.

To summarize, the two scenarios for the language of the OP royal inscriptions are:
1) Standard scenario: Persian base dialect providing most words including basic words and grammar + Median superstrate words (e.g. people's names, words related to statecraft)
2) Alternative scenario: Median base dialect with grammar and many words** + Persian substrate words (e.g. everyday words like _hand _and _know_)

I'd argue that (1) is the more likely scenario, which fits the context of royal inscriptions better. It will be harder to explain why royal inscriptions written in Median would adopt lower register words from a different dialect.

---
* New Persian sometimes continues the "Median" word rather than the attested/expected OP-base-dialect word. "asb" is an example, though the other form is hidden in savār from OP a-s-b-a-r.
** I assume that many words could be equally assigned to "Persian" or "Median". After all, they are closely related dialects. I haven't actually looked into the proportions.


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## PersoLatin

Dib said:


> "Possible" - sure! But a better question would probably be if it was "probable".


Happy to ask questions which are rough around the edges but may have enough in them to draw out better ones.

Thanks for your thoughts, I always appreciate them, they raise more questions but that’s is the idea.



Dib said:


> d-s-t- (hand) vs. Av. zasta-, d-a-n- (to know) vs. Av. zan-,


Is this a grammar change, as you have said, or a sound change?

in absence of solid evidence, scenario 1) seems very plausible, I had not considered the Median element, I still favour the idea that OP text was put together by Magis based on the king’s wishes then Avestan words were replaced by Persian ones but some elements of Avestan grammar were left in mainly because the grammar of spoken language appeared too common & lowly to the Magis & therefore not suitable for the king.


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## fdb

Derakhshan said:


> For those curious about the decipherment process, why not read the actual book written by the man who deciphered it?
> 
> Royal Asiatic Society; The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, Decyphered and Translated, with a Memoir of Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in General and on that of Behistun in Particular : Rawlinson, H. C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
> 
> It is clear from skimming through it that knowledge of Sanskrit and Avestan ("Zend") played the most important role in its decipherment, but he also references New Persian wherever he can.


Actually, the decisive work on deciphering Old Persian was done by Grotefend in 1802.


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## Dib

PersoLatin said:


> Is this a grammar change, as you have said, or a sound change?


Sorry for the unclarity. By the grammar differences (I am not using the word "change" deliberately, because that would require establishing the direction of the said change), I was referring to my previous message:


Dib said:


> For a point of comparison, in the Standard model of OP grammar, as established mainly on the basis of comparison with Sanskrit and Avestan, the only two bits of grammar in DPa without exact parallels in Av and Skt are:
> 
> 1) : h-y : The masculine singular relative pronoun. However, all its forms are still more or less historically explainable assuming that OP blended the inherited demonstrative (Skt. sa-, Av. ha-) with the inherited relative pronoun (Skt./Av. ya-). In fact, the blend does exist in Sanskrit (sya-) as well, but it works as another demonstrative there rather than as a relative pronoun like in OP, and its exact form is slightly different from the OP form in some cases, e.g. neuter singular Skt. tyat cannot parallel the actual existing OP t-y. Expectation would be ϑ-y.
> 
> 2) : a-ku-u-n-u-š : (He/she/it) did. From Skt and Av perspective, here also the form roughly looks like a blend of two forms - aorist and imperfect - two kinds of past tenses in these languages. To be exact, as if a sigmatic aorist made from the imperfective stem.


Such differences cannot be reconciled with the idea of leaving some elements of Av grammar in. They clearly belong to a different dialect.



PersoLatin said:


> I still favour the idea that OP text was put together by Magis based on the king’s wishes then Avestan words were replaced by Persian ones but some elements of Avestan grammar were left in mainly because the grammar of spoken language appeared too common & lowly to the Magis & therefore not suitable for the king.


Also consider that OP texts themselves reflect an ongoing change in the language. When we talk about OP grammar, we are really only referring to the first two generations of inscribers - Darius I and Xerxes I (together r. 522-465 BC - about 60 years). This is taken as the "classic" OP. This language already shows signs of the Old Indo-Iranian grammatical system slowly breaking down, e.g. the loss of distinction of various past tenses as mentioned above, but also loss of some case-distinctions, etc. Another 60 years down the line, Artaxerxes II onwards, the language shows more loss of case distinctions, different phonetic changes, etc. They still try to follow the model of the "classic" OP, but seem to make mistakes - presumably because of interference of their actual speech. Thus, the evolution of an MP-like system is actually recorded in the later Achaemenid inscriptions, though overlayed with archaising spellings and usages.


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