A Kus ( Persian کوس kūs ) is an ancient Persian musical instrument, a large kettledrum similar to timpani .
102-459: Kus is a Middle-Persian military term meaning "march". According to Von Mohl the term was Kūša , apparently borrowed from Aramaic , probably during the Arsacid dynasty (248 BCE-224 CE). The instrument was a pair of drums, made of clay, wood or metal in the form of a hemispherical kettle, with skin stretched over the mouth. Kus was played with drumsticks of leather or wood (The leather drumstick
204-492: A Christian Psalter fragment, which still retains all the letter distinctions that Inscriptional Pahlavi had except the one between t and ṭ ; and the Pahlavi found in papyri from the early 7th century CE, which displays even more letter coincidences than Book Pahlavi. The Manichaean script was an abjad introduced for the writing of Middle Persian by the prophet Mani (216–274 CE), who based it on his native variety of
306-502: A commission appointed by the Greek government reported that a third of the villages of Greece should have their names changed, often because of their non-Greek origin. In other instances, names were changed from a contemporary name of Greek origin to the ancient Greek name. Some village names were formed from a Greek root word with a foreign suffix or vice versa. Most of the name changes took place in areas populated by ethnic Greeks in which
408-547: A currently more popular one reflecting the Sassanid-era pronunciation, as used by C. Saleman, W. B. Henning and, in a somewhat revised form, by D. N. MacKenzie (1986). The less obvious features of the usual transcription are: A common feature of Pahlavi as well as Manichaean spelling was that the Aramaic letters ṣ and ḥ were adapted to express the sounds /t͡ʃ/ and /h/ , respectively. In addition, both could use
510-474: A different shape from a historical point of view, by under- or overlining them: e.g. the heterogram for andar 'in' is transliterated B YN , since it corresponds to Aramaic byn , but the sign that 'should' have been b actually looks like a g . Within Arameograms, scholars have traditionally used the standard Semitological designations of the Aramaic (and generally Semitic) letters, and these include
612-942: A large number of diacritics and special signs expressing the different Semitic phonemes, which were not distinguished in Middle Persian. In order to reduce the need for these, a different system was introduced by D. N. MacKenzie , which dispenses with diacritics as much as possible, often replacing them with vowel letters: A for ʾ , O for ʿ , E for H , H for Ḥ , C for Ṣ , for example ORHYA for ʿRḤYʾ ( bay 'god, majesty, lord'). For ''ṭ'', which still occurs in heterograms in Inscriptional Pahlavi, Θ may be used. Within Iranian words, however, both systems use c for original Aramaic ṣ and h for original Aramaic ḥ , in accordance with their Iranian pronunciation (see below). The letter l , when modified with
714-569: A less common view is that /x/ and /ɣ/ were uvular instead. Finally, it may be pointed out that most scholars consider the phoneme /w/ as being still a labial approximant, but a few regard it as a voiced labial fricative /v/ . The initial clusters of /s/ and a stop ( /sp-/ , /st-/ , /sk-/ ) had acquired a prosthetic vowel /i/ by the time of the Manichaean Middle Persian texts: istāyišn ( ՙst՚yšn ) 'praise' vs Pahlavi stāyišn ( ՙst՚dšn' ) 'praise'. Stress
816-444: A past Albanian Muslim population living amongst them. There are no monolingual Arvanitika-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. However, while Arvanites are bilingual in Greek and Arvanitika, Arvanitika is considered an endangered language as it is in a state of attrition due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek among the descendants of Arvanitika-speakers in recent decades, becoming monolingual Greek speakers in
918-461: A quick rate, and proper colonies in the traditional sense were established in the form of predominantly Greek city-states ( πόλεις , póleis ). Extensive trade between mainland Greece and the Hellenistic portions of Anatolia was underway by the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, with fish, grain, timber, metal, and often slaves being exported from the land. It is believed that this kind of contact with
1020-461: A script derived from Aramaic . This occurred primarily because written Aramaic had previously been the written language of government of the former Achaemenids , and the government scribes had carried that practice all over the empire. This practice had led to others adopting Imperial Aramaic as the language of communications, both between Iranians and non-Iranians. The transition from Imperial Aramaic to Middle Iranian took place very slowly, with
1122-571: A slow increase of more and more Iranian words so that Aramaic with Iranian elements gradually changed into Iranian with Aramaic elements. Under Arsacid hegemony , this Aramaic-derived writing system for Iranian languages came to be associated with the Parthians in particular (it may have originated in the Parthian chancellories ), and thus the writing system came to be called pahlavi "Parthian" too. Aside from Parthian, Aramaic-derived writing
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#17328018373061224-556: A slow rate from the 6th to 4th century. The Lydians had been particularly receptive to Greek culture, as were the 4th century dynasties of Caria and Lycia as well as the inhabitants of the Cilician plain and of the regions of Paphlagonia . The local population found their desires for advancement a stimulus to learn Greek. The indigenous urban settlements and villages in Anatolia coalesced, on their own initiative, to form cities in
1326-472: A special horizontal stroke that shows that the pronunciation is /l/ and not /r/, is rendered in the MacKenzie system as ɫ . The traditional system continues to be used by many, especially European scholars. The MacKenzie system is the one used in this article. As for Pahlavi, c is used for the transliteration of original Aramaic ṣ and h for the transliteration of original ḥ . Original Aramaic h , on
1428-472: A stratum of foreign or divergent toponyms had accumulated over the centuries. However, in some parts of northern Greece, the population was not Greek-speaking, and many of the former toponyms had reflected the diverse ethnic and linguistic origins of their inhabitants. The process of the change of toponyms in modern Greece has been described as a process of Hellenisation. A modern use is in connection with policies pursuing "cultural harmonization and education of
1530-553: A thousand of these in the Book Pahlavi variety. In addition, their spelling remained very conservative, expressing the pronunciation of the Arsacid period. The two most important subvarieties are: Other known Pahlavi varieties are the early Pahlavi found in inscriptions on coins issued in the province of Pars from the 2nd century BC to the 3rd century CE; the relatively conservative Psalter Pahlavi (6th–8th centuries CE), used in
1632-600: Is a lack of evidence from Hellenistic Syria; concerning this, most scholars view it as a case of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". The Bactrians , an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan ), were Hellenised during the reign of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent underwent Hellenisation during
1734-406: Is a major difficulty for scholars. It has also been pointed out that the Pahlavi spelling does not express the 3rd century lenitions, so the letters p , t , k and c express /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ and /z/ after vowels, e.g. šp' for šab 'night' and hc for az 'from'. The rare phoneme /ɣ/ was also expressed by the same letter shape as k (however, this sound value is usually expressed in
1836-432: Is expressed in a synchronic alternation: at least at some stage in late Middle Persian (later than the 3rd century), the consonants /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ appear to have had, after vowels, the fricative allophones [ β ] , [ ð ] , [ɣ] . This is slightly more controversial for /ɡ/ , since there appears to have been a separate phoneme /ɣ/ as well. A parallel development seems to have affected /d͡ʒ/ in
1938-480: Is far more common for the letter l to have that function, as in the example plhw' for farrox . In the relatively rare cases where l does express /l/ , it can be marked as ɫ . Hellenization Hellenization is the adoption of Greek culture , religion , language , and identity by non-Greeks. In the ancient period , colonisation often led to the Hellenisation of indigenous peoples; in
2040-580: Is in this particular late form of exclusively written Zoroastrian Middle Persian, in popular imagination the term 'Pahlavi' became synonymous with Middle Persian itself. The ISO 639 language code for Middle Persian is pal , which reflects the post-Sasanian era use of the term Pahlavi to refer to the language and not only the script. In the classification of the Iranian languages, the Middle Period includes those languages which were common in Iran from
2142-448: Is literary evidence from Philo about the extravagance of Alexandrian Jewish banquets, and The Letter of Aristeas discusses Jews dining with non-Jews as an opportunity to share Jewish wisdom. Pamphylia is a plain located between the highlands of Lycia and Cilicia . The exact date of Greek settlement in the region is not known; one possible theory is that settlers arrived in the region as part of Bronze Age maritime trade between
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#17328018373062244-399: Is nevertheless often the old pronunciation or a transitional one that is reflected in the Pahlavi spelling. 2. Voiceless stops and affricates, when occurring after vowels as well as other voiced sounds, became voiced: This process is thought not to have been taken place before Sassanid Pahlavi, and it generally is not reflected in Pahlavi spelling. A further stage in this lenition process
2346-588: Is often used as a synonym, is used in 2 Maccabees (c. 124 BC) and the Book of Acts (c. AD 80–90) to refer to clearly much more than language, though it is disputed what that may have entailed. By the 4th century BC, the process of Hellenization had started in southwestern Anatolia's Lycia , Caria and Pisidia regions. (1st century fortifications at Pelum in Galatia , on Baş Dağ in Lycaonia and at Isaura are
2448-725: Is spelt mtr' . In contrast, the Manichaean spellings are gʾh , ngʾh , šhr , myhr . Some other words with earlier /θ/ are spelt phonetically in Pahlavi, too: e.g. gēhān , spelt gyhʾn 'material world', and čihr , spelt cyhl 'face'. There are also some other cases where /h/ is spelt /t/ after p : ptkʾl for pahikār 'strife', and /t/ may also stand for /j/ in that position: ptwnd for paywand 'connection'. There are some other phoneme pairs besides /j/ and /d͡ʒ/ that are not distinguished: h (the original Aramaic ḥ ) may stand either for /h/ or for /x/ ( hm for ham 'also' as well as hl for xar 'donkey'), whereas
2550-427: Is that Arsacid word-initial /j/ produced Sassanid /d͡ʒ/ (another change that is not reflected in the Pahlavi spelling). The sound probably passed through the phase /ʒ/ , which may have continued until very late Middle Persian, since Manichaean texts did not identify Indic /d͡ʒ/ with it and introduced a separate sign for the former instead of using the letter for their native sound. Nonetheless, word-initial /j/
2652-736: The Aegean , Levant and Cyprus , while another attributes it to population movements during the instability of the Bronze Age Collapse . The Greek dialect established in Pamphylia by the Classical period was related to Arcado-Cypriot . Mopsus is a legendary founder of several coastal cities in southwestern Anatolia, including Aspendos , Phaselis , Perge and Sillyon . A bilingual Phoenician and neo-Hittite Luwian inscription found at Karatepe , dated to 800 BC, says that
2754-863: The Argeads , the Antigonids claimed descent from Heracles , the Seleucids from Apollo , and the Ptolemies from Dionysus . The Seuthopolis inscription was very influential in the modern study of Thrace . The inscription mentions Dionysus, Apollo and some Samothracian gods . Scholars have interpreted the inscription as evidence of Hellenisation in inland Thrace during the early Hellenistic, but this has been challenged by recent scholarship. However, Hellenization had its limitations. For example, areas of southern Syria that were affected by Greek culture mostly entailed Seleucid urban centres, where Greek
2856-685: The Hellenistic period , many of the territories which were conquered by Alexander the Great were Hellenized. The first known use of a verb that means "to Hellenize" was in Greek (ἑλληνίζειν) and by Thucydides (5th century BC), who wrote that the Amphilochian Argives were Hellenised as to their language by the Ambraciots , which shows that the word perhaps already referred to more than language. The similar word Hellenism , which
2958-672: The Pahlavi Psalter (7th century); these were used until the beginning of the second millennium in many places in Central Asia , including Turpan and even localities in South India . All three differ minimally from one another and indeed the less ambiguous and archaizing scripts of the latter two have helped to elucidate some aspects of the Sasanian-era pronunciation of the former. The vowels of Middle Persian were
3060-588: The Sasanian Empire . For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Persian continued to function as a prestige language . It descended from Old Persian , the language of the Achaemenid Empire and is the linguistic ancestor of Modern Persian , the official language of Iran (also known as Persia) , Afghanistan ( Dari ) and Tajikistan ( Tajik ). "Middle Iranian" is the name given to
3162-591: The imperial variety of the Aramaic alphabet used in the chancelleries of the Achaemenid Empire . As is typical of abjads, they express primarily the consonants in a word form. What sets them apart from other abjads, however, is the use of Heterograms , and more specifically Aramaeograms , i.e. words written in Aramaic (sometimes, in later periods, with distortions) but pronounced in Middle Persian: e.g. LY (Aramaic 'to me') for man 'me, I'. There were about
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3264-481: The w and n have the same graphic appearance. Furthermore, letters used as part of Aramaic heterograms and not intended to be interpreted phonetically are written in capitals: thus the heterogram for the word ān is rendered ZK , whereas its phonetic spelling is transliterated as ʾn' (the final vertical line reflects the so-called 'otiose' stroke, see below ). Finally, there is a convention of representing 'distorted/corrupt' letters, which 'should' have appeared in
3366-442: The "old" language (i.e. Middle Persian) and Aramaic-derived writing system. In time, the name of the writing system, pahlavi "Parthian", began to be applied to the "old" Middle Persian language as well, thus distinguishing it from the "new" language, farsi . Consequently, 'pahlavi' came to denote the particularly Zoroastrian, exclusively written, late form of Middle Persian. Since almost all surviving Middle Persian literature
3468-412: The 10th–11th centuries, Middle Persian texts were still intelligible to speakers of Early New Persian. However, there are definite differences that had taken place already by the 10th century: Texts in Middle Persian are found in remnants of Sasanian inscriptions and Egyptian papyri , coins and seals, fragments of Manichaean writings , and Zoroastrian literature , most of which was written down after
3570-669: The 1821 Tripolitsa Massacre of Muslim Albanians, while some Muslim Albanian speakers in the region of Bardounia remained after the war, converting to Orthodoxy. In recent times, Arvanites have expressed mixed opinions towards recent Albanian settlers within Greece. Other Arvanites during the late 1980s and early 1990s expressed solidarity with Albanian immigrants, due to linguistic similarities and being politically leftist. Relations too between Arvanites and other Orthodox Albanian-speaking communities such as those of Greek Epirus are mixed, as they are distrusted regarding religious matters due to
3672-549: The 1st century BC. Ionian , Aeolian and Doric settlers along Anatolia's Western coast seemed to have remained culturally Greek and some of their city-states date back to the Archaic Period . On the other hand, Greeks who settled in the southwestern region of Pisidia and Pamphylia seem to have been assimilated by the local culture. Panticapaeum (modern day Kerch ) was one of the early Greek colonies in Crimea . It
3774-404: The 2nd century BC. Finds from the abandoned Hellenistic era settlement include imported and locally produced imitation Greek-style terracotta figurines and ceramics. Inscriptions show that some of the inhabitants had Greek names, while others had Anatolian or possibly Celtic names. Many Phrygian cult objects were Hellenised during the Hellenistic period, but worship of traditional deities like
3876-640: The 4th century BC this population quickly started to become Hellenised. Little is known about Pisidia prior to the 3rd century BC, but there is quite a bit of archeological evidence that dates to the Hellenistic period . Literary evidence, however, including inscriptions and coins are limited. During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, native regional tongues were abandoned in favour of koine Greek and settlements began to take on characteristics of Greek polis . The Iron Age Panemoteichos I may be an early precursor to later regional Hellenistic settlements including Selge , Termessos and Sagalassos (believed to be
3978-792: The 7th-century, the Sassanids were overthrown by the Arabs. Under Arab influence, Iranian languages began to be written in Arabic script (adapted to Iranian phonology ), while Middle Persian began to rapidly evolve into New Persian and the name parsik became Arabicized farsi . Not all Iranians were comfortable with these Arabic-influenced developments, in particular, members of the literate elite, which in Sassanid times consisted primarily of Zoroastrian priests. Those former elites vigorously rejected what they perceived as ' Un-Iranian ', and continued to use
4080-420: The Aramaic distinctions between ḥ and h and between k and q were not always maintained, with the first often replacing the second, and the one between t and ṭ was lost in all but Inscriptional Pahlavi: thus YKTLWN (pronounced о̄zadan ) for Aramaic yqṭlwn 'kill', and YHWWN (pronounced būdan ) for Aramaic yhwwn 'be', even though Aramaic h is elsewhere rendered E . In the rest of this article,
4182-488: The Aramaic script of Palmyrene origin. Mani used this script to write the known book Šābuhrāgān and it continued to be used by Manichaeans until the 9th century to write in Middle Persian, and in various other Iranian languages for even longer. Specifically the Middle Persian Manichaean texts are numerous and thought to reflect mostly the period from the 3rd to the 7th centuries CE. In contrast to
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4284-447: The Arsacid sound values, but is known from the more phonetic Manichaean spelling of texts from Sassanid times. As a result of these changes, the voiceless stops and affricates /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , /t͡ʃ/ rarely occurred after vowels – mostly when geminated, which has protected them from the lenition (e.g. waččag , sp. wck' 'child'), and due to some other sound changes. Another difference between Arsacid and Sassanid-era pronunciation
4386-495: The Arvanites. The common Orthodox Christian faith they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation. Other reasons for assimilation are large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population. Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites,
4488-498: The Avesta also retain some old features, most other Zoroastrian Book Pahlavi texts (which form the overwhelming majority of the Middle Persian corpus as a whole) are linguistically more innovative. In view of the many ambiguities of the Pahlavi script, even its transliteration does not usually limit itself to rendering merely the letters as written; rather, letters are usually transliterated in accordance with their origin regardless of
4590-571: The Divine Nature; while the further assertion 'these three are One', which the modern mind finds paradoxical, was no more than commonplace to those familiar with Stoic notions. The Greek East was one of the two main cultural areas of the Roman Empire and began to be ruled by an autonomous imperial court in AD 286 under Diocletian . However, Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts of
4692-456: The Greek manner. The local kings of Asia Minor adopted Greek as their official language and sought to imitate other Greek cultural forms. The first properly Greek settlements in Anatolia originated shortly after the end of the Bronze age, around the 11th century BCE. Mycenaean settlements at Halicarnassus , Miletus , and Colophon existed before this, but Mycenaean colonization in the region
4794-529: The Hellenisation of Judaism in the pre-Christian Period (1980, German original 1976) and The 'Hellenisation' of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (1989, German original 1989), the tide began to turn decisively. Hengel argued that virtually all of Judaism was highly Hellenised well before the beginning of the Christian era, and even the Greek language was well known throughout the cities and even
4896-564: The Judaism of the diaspora was thought to have succumbed thoroughly to its influences. Bultmann thus argued that Christianity arose almost completely within those Hellenistic confines and should be read against that background, as opposed to a more traditional Jewish background. With the publication of Martin Hengel 's two-volume study Hellenism and Judaism (1974, German original 1972) and subsequent studies Jews, Greeks and Barbarians: Aspects of
4998-483: The Manichaean script and a maximally disambiguated transliterated form of Pahlavi do not provide exhaustive information about the phonemic structure of Middle Persian words, a system of transcription is also necessary. There are two traditions of transcription of Pahlavi Middle Persian texts: one closer to the spelling and reflecting the Arsacid-era pronunciation, as used by Ch. Bartholomae and H. S. Nyberg (1964) and
5100-560: The Pahlavi scripts, it is a regular and unambiguous phonetic script that expresses clearly the pronunciation of 3rd century Middle Persian and distinguishes clearly between different letters and sounds, so it provides valuable evidence to modern linguists. Not only did it not display any of the Pahlavi coalescences mentioned above, it also had special letters that enabled it to distinguish [p] and [f] (although it didn't always do so), as well as [j] and [d͡ʒ] , unique designations for [β] , [ð] , and [ɣ] , and consistent distinctions between
5202-529: The Pahlavi spellings will be indicated due to their unpredictability, and the Aramaeograms will be given priority over the 'phonetic' alternatives for the same reason. If a word expressed by an Arameogram has a grammatical ending or, in many cases, a word-formation suffix, these are generally expressed by phonetic elements: LYLYA ʾn for šab ʾn 'nights'. However, verbs in Inscriptional Pahlavi are sometimes written as 'bare ideograms', whose interpretation
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#17328018373065304-651: The Phrygian mother goddess persisted. Greek cults attested to include Hermes , Kybele , the Muses and Tyche . Greek art and culture reached Phoenicia by way of commerce before any Greek cities were founded in Syria. but Hellenisation of Syrians was not widespread until it became a Roman province . Under Roman rule in the 1st century BC there is evidence of Hellenistic style funerary architecture, decorative elements, mythological references, and inscriptions. However, there
5406-483: The Sasanian era. The language of Zoroastrian literature (and of the Sasanian inscriptions) is sometimes referred to as Pahlavi – a name that originally referred to the Pahlavi scripts , which were also the preferred writing system for several other Middle Iranian languages. Pahlavi Middle Persian is the language of quite a large body of literature which details the traditions and prescriptions of Zoroastrianism , which
5508-574: The authors did not identify or never identified a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'. Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians. Because of this, relations between Arvanites and other Albanian-speaking populations have diverged over time. During the onset of the Greek war of Independence, Arvanites fought alongside Greek revolutionaries against Muslim Albanians. For example, Arvanites participated in
5610-429: The cluster *θr in particular), but it had been replaced by /h/ by the Sassanid period: The phoneme /ɣ/ (as opposed to the late allophone of /ɡ/ ) is rare and occurs almost only in learned borrowings from Avestan and Parthian , e.g. moγ (Pahlavi mgw or mwg 'Magian'), maγ (Pahlavi mγ ) 'hole, pit'. The sound /ʒ/ may also have functioned as a marginal phoneme in borrowings as well. The phoneme /l/
5712-411: The coinciding forms: thus, even though Book Pahlavi has the same letter shapes for original n , w and r , for original ʾ and ḥ and for original d , g and y , besides having some ligatures that coincide in shape with certain individual letters, these are all transliterated differently. For instance, the spelling of gōspand 'domestic animal' is transliterated gwspnd in spite of the fact that
5814-468: The contributions of Semitic-speaking and other Near Eastern cultures. The twentieth century witnessed a lively debate over the extent of Hellenisation in the Levant , particularly among the ancient Jews , which has continued until today. Interpretations on the rise of Early Christianity , which was applied most famously by Rudolf Bultmann , used to see Judaism as largely unaffected by Hellenism, and
5916-656: The diminution of the community of Corfiot Italians , which had lived in Corfu since the Middle Ages; by the 1940s, there were only 400 Corfiot Italians left. Arvanites are descendants of Albanian settlers who came to the present southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century. With participation in the Greek War of Independence and the Greek Civil War , this has led to increasing assimilation amongst
6018-641: The doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the Divine Unity. Thus Seneca , writing of the supreme Power which shapes the universe, states, 'This Power we sometimes call the All-ruling God, sometimes the incorporeal Wisdom, sometimes the holy Spirit, sometimes Destiny.' The Church had only to reject the last of these terms to arrive at its own acceptable definition of
6120-477: The early Middle Persian of the Arsacid period (until the 3rd century CE) and the Middle Persian of the Sassanid period (3rd – 7th century CE) is due to a process of consonant lenition after voiced sounds that took place during the transition between the two. Its effects were as follows: 1. Voiced stops, when occurring after vowels, became semivowels : This process may have taken place very early, but it
6222-739: The empire, and Latin was the state language. When the Western Empire fell and the Roman Senate sent the regalia of the Western Emperor to the Eastern Emperor Zeno in AD 476, Constantinople ( Byzantium in Ancient Greek ) was recognised as the seat of the sole Emperor. A process of political Hellenisation began and led, among other reforms, to the declaration of Greek as the official language. In 1909,
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#17328018373066324-623: The fall of the Achaemenid Empire in the fourth century BCE up to the fall of the Sasanian Empire in the seventh century CE. The most important and distinct development in the structure of Iranian languages of this period is the transformation from the synthetic form of the Old Period ( Old Persian and Avestan ) to an analytic form: The modern-day descendants of Middle Persian are New Persian and Luri . The changes between late Middle and Early New Persian were very gradual, and in
6426-479: The following: It has been doubted whether the Middle Persian short mid vowels /e/ and /o/ were phonemic , since they do not appear to have a unique continuation in later forms of Persian and no minimal pairs have been found. The evidence for them is variation between spelling with and without the matres lectionis y and w , as well as etymological considerations. They are thought to have arisen from earlier /a/ in certain conditions, including, for /e/ ,
6528-522: The kingdom's founding to 436 BC, when the Spartocid dynasty replaced the ruling Archaeanactids. The Hellenistic Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms that formed after Alexander's death were particularly relevant to the history of Judaism . Located between the two kingdoms, Judea experienced long periods of warfare and instability. Judea fell under Seleucid control in 198 BC. By the time Antiochus IV Epiphanes became king of Judea in 175 BC, Jerusalem
6630-467: The later forms are an (Manichaean ՚n ), and meh (Pahlavi ms and Manichaean myh ); indeed, some scholars have reconstructed them as monosyllabic any , mahy even for Middle Persian. Middle Persian has been written in a number of different scripts. The corpora in different scripts also exhibit other linguistic differences that are partly due to their different ages, dialects and scribal traditions. The Pahlavi scripts are abjads derived from
6732-496: The letter p to express /f/ , and ṣ to express z after a vowel. The widespread use of Aramaeograms in Pahlavi, often existing in parallel with 'phonetic' spellings, has already been mentioned: thus, the same word hašt 'eight' can be spelt hšt or TWMNYA . A curious feature of the system is that simple word stems sometimes have spellings derived from Aramaic inflected forms: the spellings of verb stems include Aramaic inflectional affixes such as -WN , -TWN or -N and Y- ;
6834-518: The linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state" - the Hellenisation of minority groups in modern Greece. The term Hellenisation (or Hellenization) is also used in the context of Greek opposition to the use of the Slavic dialects of Greece . In 1870, the Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the Ionian islands , which had been annexed to Greece six years earlier. That led to
6936-549: The middle stage of development of the numerous Iranian languages and dialects . The middle stage of the Iranian languages begins around 450 BCE and ends around 650 CE. One of those Middle Iranian languages is Middle Persian, i.e. the middle stage of the language of the Persians, an Iranian people of Persia proper , which lies in the south-western highlands on the border with Babylonia . The Persians called their language Parsig , meaning "Persian". Another Middle Iranian language
7038-462: The name Naghghareh, such as the great Persian mystic poet Molana Jalal al-Din Rumi . Middle-Persian Middle Persian , also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script : 𐭯𐭠𐭫𐭮𐭩𐭪 , Manichaean script : 𐫛𐫀𐫡𐫘𐫏𐫐 , Avestan script : 𐬞𐬀𐬭𐬯𐬍𐬐 ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of
7140-506: The only known Hellenistic-style structures in central and eastern Anatolia ). When it was advantageous to do so, places like Side and Aspendos invented Greek-themed origin myths; an inscription published in SEG shows that in the 4th century BC Aspendos claimed ties to Argos , similar to Nikokreon of Cyprus who also claimed Argive lineage. (Argos was home to the Kings of Macedon .) Like
7242-437: The other hand, is sometimes rendered as ẖ . For original ṭ , the sign ṯ is used. The special Manichaean letters for /x/ , /f/ , [β] , /ɣ/ and [ð] are transcribed in accordance with their pronunciation as x , f , β , γ and δ . Unlike Pahlavi, the Manichaean script uses the letter Ayin also in Iranian words (see below) and it is transliterated in the usual Semitological way as ՙ . Since, like most abjads, even
7344-597: The pairs [x] – [h] and [r] – [l] . Since knowledge of Pahlavi decreased after the Muslim conquest of Iran , the Zoroastrians occasionally transcribed their religious texts into other, more accessible or unambiguous scripts. One approach was to use the Avestan alphabet , a practice known as Pazand ; another was to resort to the same Perso-Arabic script that was already being used for New Persian , and that
7446-579: The presence and importance of the Kus and Karnay in the war fields. According to the Greek historians, the drum was used by the Persians; Plutarch tells of Iranian warriors at the time of the Arsacid dynasty using kus as warlike instruments. Apparently after the introduction of Islam , the word Naghghāreh was used for small kettledrums. It seems that the word Naghghareh comes from the Arabic verb Naghr- that means to strike and to beat. A few poets mentioned
7548-479: The presence of a following /n/ , sibilant or front vowel in the next syllable, and for /o/ , the presence of a following labial consonant or the vowel /u/ in the next syllable. Long /eː/ and /oː/ had appeared first in Middle Persian, since they had developed from the Old Persian diphthongs /ai/ and /aw/ . The consonant phonemes were the following: A major distinction between the pronunciation of
7650-547: The rabbis, and elements that violated the halakha and midrash were prohibited. One example is the elimination of some aspects of Hellenistic banquets, such as the practice of offering libations to the gods, while incorporating certain elements that gave the meals a more Jewish character. Discussion of Scripture , the singing of sacred songs and attendance of students of the Torah were encouraged. One detailed account of Jewish-style Hellenistic banquets comes from Ben Sira . There
7752-493: The reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, to which he offered a large number of marble columns as dedication to the goddess. It was in the towns that Hellenisation made its greatest progress, with the process often being synonymous with urbanisation. Hellenisation reached Pisidia and Lycia sometime in the 4th century BC, but the interior remained largely unaffected for several more centuries until it came under Roman rule in
7854-661: The reign of the Indo-Greek Kingdom . The periodisation of the Hellenistic Age , between the conquests of Alexander the Great up to Octavian ' s victory at the Battle of Actium , has been attributed to the 19th-century historian J. G. Droysen . According to this model the spread of Greek culture during this period made the rise of Christianity possible. Later, in the 20th century, scholars questioned this 19th-century paradigm for failing to account for
7956-561: The ruling dynasty there traced their origins to Mopsus. Mopsus, whose name is also attested to in Hittite documents, may originally have been an Anatolian figure that became part of the cultural traditions of Pamphylia's early Greek settlers. Attested to in Linear B texts, he is given a Greek genealogy as a descendant of Manto and Apollo . For centuries the indigenous population exerted considerable influence on Greek settlers, but after
8058-442: The same position, possibly earlier; not only was it weakened to a fricative [ʒ] , but it was also depalatalised to [z] . In fact, old Persian [d͡ʒ] and [ʒ] in any position also produced [z] . Unlike the case with the spirantisation of stops, this change is uncontroversially recognised for Sassanid times. The lenition of voiceless stops and affricates remained largely unexpressed in Pahlavi spelling, which continues to reflect
8160-485: The smaller towns of Jewish Palestine. Scholars have continued to nuance Hengel's views, but almost all believe that strong Hellenistic influences were throughout the Levant, even among the conservative Jewish communities, which were the most nationalistic. In his introduction to the 1964 book Meditations , Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoic philosophy on Christianity: Again in
8262-411: The spellings of pronouns are often derived from Aramaic prepositional phrases ( tо̄ 'you' is LK , originally Aramaic lk 'to you', о̄y 'he' is OLE , originally Aramaic ʿlh 'onto him'); and inalienable nouns are often noun phrases with pronominal modifiers ( pidar 'father' is ABYtl , originally Aramaic ʾby 'my father', pāy 'foot' is LGLE , originally Aramaic rglh 'his foot'). Furthermore,
8364-485: The spread of Hellenistic culture, religion, and ideas in Anatolia was a peaceful process. Worship of the Greek pantheon of gods was practiced in Lydia. Lydian king Croesus often invited the wisest Greek philosophers, orators and statesmen to attend his court. Croesus himself often consulted the famous oracle at Delphi-bestowing many gifts and offerings to this and other religious sites for example. He provided patronage for
8466-522: The state of affairs in living Middle Persian only indirectly. The surviving manuscripts are usually 14th-century copies. Other, less abundantly attested varieties are Manichaean Middle Persian , used for a sizable amount of Manichaean religious writings, including many theological texts, homilies and hymns (3rd–9th, possibly 13th century), and the Middle Persian of the Church of the East , evidenced in
8568-655: The three most prominent cities of Hellenistic Pisidia). The site is evidence of "urban organisation" that predates the Greek polis by 500 years. Based on Panemoteichos I and other Iron Age sites, including the Phrygian Midas şehri and the Cappadocian fortification of Kerkenes , experts believe that "behind the Greek influence that shaped the Hellenistic Pisidian communities there lay a tangible and important Anatolian tradition." According to
8670-451: The transition of /θ/ to /h/ in some words (in front of /r/ this reflex is due to Parthian influence, since the Middle Persian reflex should have been /s/ ). In such words, the spelling may have s or, in front of r – t . For example, gāh 'place, time' is spelt gʾs (cf. Old Persian gāθu ) and nigāh '(a) look' is spelt nkʾs ; šahr 'country, town' is spelt štr' (cf. Avestan xsaθra ) and mihr 'Mithra, contract, friendship'
8772-635: The transliteration). Similarly, the letter d may stand for /j/ after a vowel, e.g. pʾd for pāy 'foot' – this is no longer apparent in Book Pahlavi due to the coincidence of the shapes of the original letters y , d and g , but is already clearly seen in Inscriptional and Psalter Pahlavi. Indeed, it even appears to have been the general rule word-finally, regardless of the word's origins, although modern transliterations of words like xwadāy ( xwtʾd ) and mēnōy ( mynwd ) do not always reflect this analogical / pseudo-historical spelling. Final īy
8874-475: The use of original Aramaic h is restricted to heterograms (transliterated E in MacKenzie's system, e.g. LGLE for pāy 'foot'). Not only /p/ , but also the frequent sound /f/ is expressed by the letter p , e.g. plhw' for farrox 'fortunate'. While the original letter r is retained in some words as an expression of the sound /r/ , especially in older frequent words and Aramaeograms (e.g. štr' for šahr 'country, town', BRTE for duxt 'daughter'), it
8976-405: The writings of Arrian the population of Side , who traced their origins to Aeolian Cyme , had forgotten the Greek language by the time Alexander arrived at the city in 334 BC. There are coins and stone inscriptions that attest to a unique script from the region but the language has only been partially deciphered. The latest dateable coins found at the Phrygian capital of Gordion are from
9078-509: Was Parthian , i.e. the language of the northwestern Iranian peoples of Parthia proper , which lies along the southern/south-eastern edge of the Caspian sea and is adjacent to the boundary between western and eastern Iranian languages. The Parthians called their language Parthawig , meaning "Parthian". Via regular sound changes Parthawig became Pahlawig , from which the word 'Pahlavi' eventually evolved. The -ig in parsig and parthawig
9180-697: Was a regular Middle Iranian appurtenant suffix for "pertaining to". The New Persian equivalent of -ig is -i . When the Arsacids (who were Parthians) came to power in the 3rd-century BCE, they inherited the use of written Greek (from the successors of Alexander the Great ) as the language of government. Under the cultural influence of the Greeks ( Hellenization ), some Middle Iranian languages, such as Bactrian , also had begun to be written in Greek script . But yet other Middle Iranian languages began to be written in
9282-529: Was adopted for at least four other Middle Iranian languages, one of which was Middle Persian. In the 3rd-century CE, the Parthian Arsacids were overthrown by the Sassanids , who were natives of the south-west and thus spoke Middle Persian as their native language. Under Sassanid hegemony, the Middle Persian language became a prestige dialect and thus also came to be used by non-Persian Iranians. In
9384-590: Was already somewhat Hellenized. In 170 BC, both claimants to the High Priesthood, Jason and Menelaus , bore Greek names. Jason had established institutions of Greek education and in later years Jewish culture started to be suppressed including forbidding circumcision and observance of the Sabbath . Hellenization of members of the Jewish elite included names and clothes, but other customs were adapted by
9486-503: Was called Daval ). Kus usually was carried on horseback, camelback or elephant during war to encourage the army. The instrument was also played on many occasions such as festivals and weddings. In ancient times, kus was accompaniment by karnay (Persian trumpet or horn). Particularly the Persian epic poets Ferdowsi and Nizami in describing battles mentioned kus and karnay in a number of entries. Many Persian miniatures paintings show
9588-648: Was commonly spoken. The countryside, on the other hand, was largely unaffected, with most of its inhabitants speaking Syriac and clinging to their native traditions. By itself, archaeological evidence only gives researchers an incomplete picture of Hellenization; it is often not possible to state with certainty whether particular archaeological findings belonged to Greeks, Hellenized indigenous peoples, indigenous people who simply owned Greek-style objects or some combination of these groups. Thus, literary sources are also used to help researchers interpret archaeological findings. Greek cultural influence spread into Anatolia in
9690-607: Was founded by Miletus around 600 BC on a site with good terrain for a defensive acropolis . By the time the Cimmerian colonies had organised into the Bosporan Kingdom much of the local native population had been Hellenized. Most scholars date the establishment of the kingdom to 480 BC, when the Archaeanactid dynasty assumed control of Panticapaeum, but classical archaeologist Gocha R. Tsetskhladze has dated
9792-419: Was on the last syllable. That was due to the fact that any Old Persian post-stress syllables had been apocopated : It has been suggested that words such as anīy 'other' (Pahlavi spelling AHRN , AHRNy d , Manichaean ՚ny ) and mahīy 'bigger' (Manichaean mhy ) may have been exceptionally stressed on the first syllable, since the last one was apocopated already in the course of the Middle Persian period:
9894-457: Was referred to as Pārsī. Since these methods were used at a relatively late linguistic stage, these transcriptions often reflect a very late pronunciation close to New Persian. In general, Inscriptional Pahlavi texts have the most archaic linguistic features, Manichaean texts and the Psalter exhibit slightly later, but still relatively early language stages, and while the Pahlavi translations of
9996-425: Was regularly written y d . In the same way, (w)b may also correspond to a w in the pronunciation after a vowel. The fortition of initial /j/ to /d͡ʒ/ (or /ʒ/ ) is not reflected either, so y can express initial /d͡ʒ/ , e.g. yʾm for ǰām 'glass' (while it still expresses /j/ in the learned word y z dt' for yazd 'god'). Some even earlier sound changes are not consistently reflected either, such as
10098-555: Was retained/reintroduced in learned borrowings from Avestan . Furthermore, some forms of Middle Persian appear to have preserved ǰ (from Proto-Iranian /d͡ʒ/ or /t͡ʃ/ ) after n due to Parthian influence, instead of the usual weakening to z . This pronunciation is reflected in Book Pahlavi, but not in Manichaean texts: Judging from the spelling, the consonant /θ/ may have been pronounced before /r/ in certain borrowings from Parthian in Arsacid times (unlike native words, which had /h/ for earlier *θ in general and /s/ for
10200-538: Was sporadic at best and not on the same scale as the later Greek colonization of Anatolia. These initial posts in the 2nd millenium BCE, however, were less colonies in the traditional sense and more akin to the factories of the Age of Discovery ; that is, that they were trading posts initially established to conduct trade with Anatolian locals. By the beginning of the Archaic period , settlement of Anatolia had begun to grow at
10302-446: Was still relatively rare as well, especially so in Manichaean texts, mostly resulting from Proto-Iranian *rd, *rz and, more rarely, *r. It also occurred in the combination /hl/ , which was a reflex of Old Persian /rθ/ and /rs/ (cf. the words 'Pahlavi' and 'Parthian'). The sound /xw/ may be viewed as a phoneme or merely as a combination of /x/ and /w/ . Usually /x/ , /xw/ and /ɣ/ are considered to have been velar ;
10404-502: Was the state religion of Sasanian Iran (224 to c. 650) before the Muslim conquest of Persia . The earliest texts in Zoroastrian Middle Persian were probably written down in late Sasanian times (6th–7th centuries), although they represent the codification of earlier oral tradition. However, most texts date from the ninth to the 11th century, when Middle Persian had long ceased to be a spoken language, so they reflect
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