Apadana ( Old Persian : 𐎠𐎱𐎭𐎠𐎴 , [apəˈdänə] or [äpəˈdänə] ) is a large hypostyle hall in Persepolis , Iran . It belongs to the oldest building phase of the city of Persepolis, in the first half of the 6th century BC, as part of the original design by Darius the Great . Its construction was completed by Xerxes I . Modern scholarship "demonstrates the metaphorical nature of the Apadana reliefs as idealised social orders".
31-678: As a word, apadāna ( Old Persian 𐎠𐎱𐎭𐎠𐎴 , masc.) is used to designate a hypostyle hall, i.e., a palace or audience hall of stone construction with columns. The word is rendered in Elamite as ha-ha-da-na and in Babylonian ap-pa-da-an is etymologically ambiguous. It has been compared to the Sanskrit āpādana (आपादन) which means 'to arrive at', and also to the Sanskrit apa-dhā (अपधा) which means "a hide-out or concealment", and
62-675: A written language , Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. It is an Iranian language and as such a member of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family . The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscriptions . Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages which are attested in original texts. The oldest date of use of Old Persian as
93-474: A famous Iranologist and the author of the book Persian Grammar , states: The language known as New Persian, which usually is called at this period (early Islamic times) by the name of Parsi-Dari, can be classified linguistically as a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of Sassanian Iran, itself a continuation of Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids. Unlike
124-519: A new "form of writing" being made by himself which is said to be "in Aryan ": King Darius says: By the grace of Ahuramazda this is the inscription which I have made. Besides, it was in Aryan (" ariyâ ") script, and it was composed on clay tablets and on parchment. Besides, a sculptured figure of myself I made. Also, the analysis of certain Old Persian inscriptions are "supposed or claimed" to predate Darius
155-463: A similar way. Voices Active, Middle (them. pres. -aiy- , -ataiy- ), Passive ( -ya- ). Mostly the forms of first and third persons are attested. The only preserved Dual form is ajīva tam 'both lived'. Achaemenid dynasty The Achaemenid dynasty ( Old Persian : 𐏃𐎧𐎠𐎶𐎴𐎡𐏁𐎡𐎹 Haxāmanišyaʰ ; Persian : هخامنشی Haxâmaneši ; Ancient Greek : Ἀχαιμενίδαι Achaimenidai ; Latin : Achaemenides )
186-572: A spoken language is not precisely known. According to certain historical assumptions about the early history and origin of ancient Persians in Southwestern Iran (where Achaemenids hailed from), Old Persian was originally spoken by a tribe called Parsuwash , who arrived in the Iranian Plateau early in the 1st millennium BCE and finally migrated down into the area of present-day Fārs province . Their language, Old Persian, became
217-421: Is a direct continuation of Old Persian and was used as the written official language of the country. Comparison of the evolution at each stage of the language shows great simplification in grammar and syntax. However, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian. Old Persian "presumably" has a Median language substrate . The Median element is readily identifiable because it did not share in
248-402: Is another Old Iranian language related to Old Persian; both are classified as Western Iranian languages , and many Median names appear in Old Persian texts. The group of Old Iranian languages was presumably large; however, knowledge of it is restricted mainly to Old Persian, Avestan , and Median. The first two are the only languages in that group to have left written original texts, while Median
279-414: Is known mostly from loanwords in Old Persian. By the 4th century BCE, the late Achaemenid period , the inscriptions of Artaxerxes II and Artaxerxes III differ enough from the language of Darius' inscriptions to be called a "pre-Middle Persian," or "post-Old Persian." Old Persian subsequently evolved into Middle Persian , which is in turn the ancestor of New Persian . Professor Gilbert Lazard ,
310-678: Is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey and Egypt , with the most important attestation by far being the contents of the Behistun Inscription (dated to 525 BCE). In 2007, research into the vast Persepolis Fortification Archive at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago unearthed Old Persian tablets, which suggest Old Persian was a written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. As
341-673: The Greek apo-thēkē ( αποθήκη ), meaning "storehouse". The word survived into later periods in Iran, as the Parthian 'pdn(y) or 'pdnk(y) "palace", and outside Iran it still survives in several languages as loan-words (including the Arabic فَدَن ( transliteration : fadan ) for "palace" and the Armenian aparan-kʿ for "palace".) As a modern architectural and archaeological term,
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#1732772988934372-606: The Umayyad architecture . Early mosques built in Persia and Iraq imitate this structure. 29°56′06″N 52°53′24″E / 29.935°N 52.890°E / 29.935; 52.890 Old Persian Old Persian is one of two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan ) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of the Sasanian Empire ). Like other Old Iranian languages, it
403-684: The Achaemenids were a clan of the Pasargadae tribe : These were the leading tribes, on which all the other Persians were dependent, namely the Pasargadae, Maraphians, and Maspioi. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most noble and include the family of Achaemenids, the Kings of Persia, who are descendants of Perseus . Darius the Great , in an effort to establish his legitimacy, later traced his genealogy to Achaemenes , Persian " Haxāmaniš ". His son
434-470: The Great. Although it is true that the oldest attested Old Persian inscriptions are found on the Behistun monument from Darius, the creation of this "new type of writing" seems, according to Schmitt, "to have begun already under Cyrus the Great ". The script shows a few changes in the shape of characters during the period it was used. This can be seen as a standardization of the heights of wedges, which in
465-495: The area of Lake Urmia in the records of Shalmaneser III . The exact identity of the Parsuwash is not known for certain, but from a linguistic viewpoint the word matches Old Persian pārsa itself coming directly from the older word *pārćwa . Also, as Old Persian contains many words from another extinct Iranian language, Median , according to P. O. Skjærvø it is probable that Old Persian had already been spoken before
496-622: The beginning (i.e. in DB ) took only half the height of a line. The following phonemes are expressed in the Old Persian script: Notes: Lycian 𐊋𐊆𐊈𐊈𐊀𐊓𐊕𐊑𐊏𐊀 Kizzaprñna ~ 𐊈𐊆𐊖𐊀𐊓𐊕𐊑𐊏𐊀 Zisaprñna for (genuine) Old Persian *Ciçafarnā (besides the Median form *Ciθrafarnah ) = Tissaphernes suggests /t͡s/ as the pronunciation of ç (compare [1] and Kloekhorst 2008, p. 125 in [2] for this example, who, however, mistakenly writes Çiçafarnā , which contradicts
527-510: The developments that were peculiar to Old Persian. Median forms "are found only in personal or geographical names [...] and some are typically from religious vocabulary and so could in principle also be influenced by Avestan ." "Sometimes, both Median and Old Persian forms are found, which gave Old Persian a somewhat confusing and inconsistent look: 'horse,' for instance, is [attested in Old Persian as] both asa (OPers.) and aspa (Med.)." Old Persian texts were written from left to right in
558-408: The epenthetic vowel mentioned above), where it became /ɡ/ . This suggests that it was really pronounced as [w] . Old Persian has 3 types of grammatical number: singular, dual and plural. Old Persian has three grammatical genders : masculine, feminine and neuter. In contrast, Modern Persian (as well as Middle Persian ) is a genderless language . Old Persian stems: Adjectives are declined in
589-599: The etymology [ PIIr. *Čitra-swarnas- ] and the Middle Persian form Čehrfar [ ç gives Middle Persian s ]). The phoneme /l/ does not occur in native Iranian vocabulary, only in borrowings from Akkadian (a new /l/ develops in Middle Persian from Old Persian /rd/ and the change of /rθ/ to /hl/ ). The phoneme /r/ can also form a syllable peak; both the way Persian names with syllabic /r/ (such as Brdiya ) are rendered in Elamite and its further development in Middle Persian suggest that before
620-565: The formation of the Achaemenid Empire and was spoken during most of the first half of the first millennium BCE. Old Persian belongs to the Iranian language family , a branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, itself within the large family of Indo-European languages . The common ancestors of Indo-Iranians came from Central Asia sometime in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE . The extinct and unattested Median language
651-550: The official language of the Achaemenid kings. Assyrian records, which in fact appear to provide the earliest evidence for ancient Iranian (Persian and Median) presence on the Iranian Plateau, give a good chronology but only an approximate geographical indication of what seem to be ancient Persians. In these records of the 9th century BCE, Parsuwash (along with Matai , presumably Medians) are first mentioned in
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#1732772988934682-563: The other languages and dialects, ancient and modern, of the Iranian group such as Avestan , Parthian , Soghdian , Kurdish , Pashto , etc., Old, Middle and New Persian represent one and the same language at three states of its history. It had its origin in Fars and is differentiated by dialectical features, still easily recognizable from the dialect prevailing in north-western and eastern Iran. Middle Persian , also sometimes called Pahlavi,
713-747: The syllabic /r/ , an epenthetic vowel [i] had developed already in the Old Persian period, which later became [u] after labials. For example, Old Persian Vᵃ-rᵃ-kᵃ-a-nᵃ /wr̩kaːna/ is rendered in Elamite as Mirkānu- , rendering transcriptions such as V(a)rakāna , Varkāna or even Vurkāna questionable and making Vrkāna or Virkāna much more realistic (and equally for vrka- "wolf", Brdiya and other Old Persian words and names with syllabic /r/ ). While v usually became /v/ in Middle Persian, it became /b/ word-initially in New Persian, except before [u] (including
744-425: The syllabic Old Persian cuneiform script and had 36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms . The usage of logograms is not obligatory. The script was surprisingly not a result of evolution of the script used in the nearby civilisation of Mesopotamia . Despite the fact that Old Persian was written in cuneiform script, the script was not a direct continuation of Mesopotamian tradition and in fact, according to Schmitt,
775-458: The word apadana is also used to refer to Urartian hypostyle halls, such as those excavated at Altintepe and Erebuni . These halls predate those from Persia, and it has been proposed that Urartu could be the stylistic origin of the later Persian hypostyle audience halls. The Apadana Palace in Susa started construction during the reign of Darius after the overall plan was chosen in 515 BC but it
806-403: Was a "deliberate creation of the sixth century BCE". The origin of the Old Persian cuneiform script and the identification of the date and process of introduction are a matter of debate among Iranian scholars with no general agreement having been reached. The factors making the consensus difficult are, among others, the difficult passage DB (IV lines 88–92) from Darius the Great who speaks of
837-624: Was a royal house that ruled the Persian Empire , which eventually stretched from Egypt and Thrace in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. The history of the Achaemenid dynasty is mainly known through Greek historians , such as Herodotus , Thucydides , and Xenophon . Additional sources include the Hebrew Bible , other Jewish religious texts , and native Iranian sources . According to Herodotus,
868-579: Was destroyed in 331 BC by the army of Alexander the Great . Stones from the columns were used as building material for nearby settlements. By the start of the 20th century, only 13 of these giant columns were still standing. The re-erecting of a complete, but fallen column in the 1970s, is now the 14th standing column of the Apadana. The Apadana in Susa was—like the city itself—largely abandoned, and pillaged for building material. The apadana hall influenced
899-570: Was finished during the reign of Xerxes I . The walls of this palace are made of clay with a brick facade and its columns are made of stone. Its inner walls were covered with glazed brick reliefs and featured soldiers of the Eternal Guard, a winged lion, and a lotus flower. Important parts of the Apadana Palace caught fire during the reign of Artaxerxes I (461 BC) and were rebuilt during the reign of Artaxerxes II (359 BC). The Apadana
930-529: Was known to its native speakers as ariya (Iranian). Old Persian is close to both Avestan and the language of the Rig Veda , the oldest form of the Sanskrit language. All three languages are highly inflected . Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets and seals of the Achaemenid era ( c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what
961-693: Was the largest building on the Terrace at Persepolis and was excavated by the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld and his assistant Friedrich Krefter, and Erich Schmidt, between 1931 and 1939. Important material relevant to the excavations are today housed in the archives of the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The Apadana at Persepolis has a surface of 1000 square metres; its roof was supported by 72 columns, each 24 metres tall. The entire hall