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32-760: The Maraphii ( Old Persian : Marafiya ) were an Iranian tribe from Persis ( Parsa in Old Persian ) or Persia , in modern southwestern Iran . This tribe was one of the three main and leading Persian tribes (the Persians were and are one of the Iranian peoples ) alongside the Maspii and the Pasargadae (from this later tribe came the Achaemenid royal family). This Ancient Near East –related article

64-474: 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

96-542: A later split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages. However, according to Hiebert, an expansion of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) into Iran and the margin of the Indus Valley is "the best candidate for an archaeological correlate of the introduction of Indo-Iranian speakers to Iran and South Asia", despite the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe in

128-579: 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

160-434: 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'. Indo-Iranian language The Indo-Iranian languages (also known as Indo-Iranic languages or collectively the Aryan languages ) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of

192-454: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Iran -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Old Persian 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 is now Iran , Romania ( Gherla ), Armenia , Bahrain , Iraq , Turkey and Egypt , with

224-421: 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

256-402: 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

288-599: 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 a spoken language

320-414: 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 ,

352-554: 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

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384-589: The Indian subcontinent (where the Indic branch is spoken, also called Indo-Aryan) up to the Iranian Plateau (where the Iranic branch is spoken). This branch is also known as Aryan languages , referring to the languages spoken by Aryan peoples, where the term Aryan is the ethnocultural self-designation of ancient Indo-Iranians . But in modern-day, Western scholars avoid the term Aryan since World War II , owing to

416-539: The Indo-European language family. They include over 300 languages, spoken by around 1.5 billion speakers, predominantly in South Asia , West Asia and parts of Central Asia . The areas with Indo-Iranian languages stretch from Europe ( Romani ) and the Caucasus ( Ossetian , Tat and Talysh ), down to Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia ( Kurdish languages , Gorani , Kurmanji Dialect continuum , Zaza ),

448-729: The Levant ( Domari ) and Iran ( Persian ), eastward to Xinjiang ( Sarikoli ) and Assam ( Assamese ), and south to Sri Lanka ( Sinhala ) and the Maldives ( Maldivian ), with branches stretching as far out as Oceania and the Caribbean for Fiji Hindi and Caribbean Hindustani respectively. Furthermore, there are large diaspora communities of Indo-Iranian speakers in northwestern Europe (the United Kingdom ), North America ( United States , Canada ), Australia , South Africa , and

480-522: 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

512-649: The Near East, or south of the region between Kopet Dag and Pamir - Karakorum . J. P. Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern India, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes , Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed

544-756: The Persian Gulf Region ( United Arab Emirates , Saudi Arabia ). The number of distinct languages listed in Ethnologue are 312, while those recognised in Glottolog are 320. The Indo-Iranian language with the largest number of native speakers is the Hindustani language ( Hindi - Urdu ). The term Indo-Iranian languages refers to the spectrum of Indo-European languages spoken in the Southern Asian region of Eurasia , spanning from

576-495: 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

608-622: 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

640-510: 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

672-408: 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

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704-653: 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

736-511: 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

768-613: 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 a written language , Old Persian

800-550: 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

832-563: 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,

864-650: The perceived negative connotation associated with Aryanism . Historically, the Indo-Iranian speakers, both Iranians and Indo-Aryans, originally referred to themselves as the Aryans . The Proto-Indo-Iranian -speakers are generally associated with the Sintashta culture, which is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture , which, in turn, is believed to represent

896-747: 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

928-425: 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,

960-558: The technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare . There is almost a general consensus among scholars that the Andronovo culture , the successor of Sintasha culture, was an Indo-Iranian culture. Currently, only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture: Alakul and Fëdorovo cultures. The Andronovo culture is considered as an "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with

992-523: The westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures. However, the exact genetic relationship between the Yamnaya culture, Corded Ware culture and Sinthasta culture remains unclear. The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of

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1024-403: 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

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