Information about Old Persian cuneiform script

Old Persian Cuneiform
Type	Alphabet with Syllabic elements
Languages	Old Persian
Time period	525 BC – 330 BC
Parent systems	Cuneiform script Old Persian Cuneiform
Unicode range	U+103A0 – U+103D5
ISO 15924	Xpeo
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Old Persian cuneiform is the primary script used in Old Persian writings. It is a semi-alphabetic syllabic cuneiform script.

Old Persian cuneiform is loosely inspired by the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, however only one glyph, l^a (��), derives from that script's la (). (l^a didn't occur in native Old Persian words, but was found in Akkadian borrowings.) Scholars today mostly agree that the Old Persian script was invented by about 525 BC to provide monument inscriptions for the Achaemenid king Darius I, to be used at Behistun.

While a few Old Persian texts seem to be inscribed during Cyrus II (CMa, CMb, and CMc, all found at Pasargadae), the first Achaemenid emperor, or Arsames and Ariaramnes (AsH and AmH, both found at Hamadan), grandfather and great-grandfather of Darius I, all five, specially the later two, are generally agreed to have been later inscriptions.

Alphabetic properties

Although based on a logo-syllabic prototype, the system is essentially alphabetic in character. Thirteen out of twenty-two consonants are invariant, regardless of the following vowel (that is, they are alphabetic), while only six have a distinct form for each consonant-vowel combination (that is, they are syllabic), and among these, only d and m occur in three forms for all three vowels. (k, g, j, and v only occur before two of the vowels, and so only have two forms.) In addition, three consonants, t, n, and r, are partially syllabic, having the same form before a and i, and a distinct form only before u. For instance, 𐎴 could be na or ni, whereas 𐎵 is specifically nu. Ambiguous syllables must be followed by a vowel for clarification, but in practice even unambiguous syllables such as nu, or fully syllabic ma, mi, and mu, are followed by explicit vowels.

The effect is not unlike the English [dʒ] sound, which is typically written g before i or e, but j before other vowels (gem, jam), or the Castillian Spanish [θ] sound, which is written c before i or e and z before other vowels (cinco, zapato): it is more accurate to say that some of the Old Persian consonants are written by different letters depending on the following vowel, rather than classifying the script as syllabic. This situation had its origin in the Assyrian cuneiform syllabary, where several syllabic distinctions had been lost and were often clarified with explicit vowels. However, in the case of Assyrian, the vowel was not always used, and was never used where not needed, so the system remained (logo-)syllabic.

For a while it was speculated that the alphabet could have had its origin in such a system, with a leveling of consonant signs a millennium earlier producing something like the Ugaritic alphabet, but today it is generally accepted that the Semitic alphabet arose from Egyptian hieroglyphs, where vowel notation was not important. (See Middle Bronze Age alphabets.)

Signs

The script encodes three vowels, a, i, u, and twenty-two consonants, k, x, g, c, ç, j, t, θ, d, p, f, b, n, m, y, v, r, l, s, z, š, and h. Compared to the Avestan alphabet Old Persian notably lacks voiced fricatives, but including a voiceless palatal fricative ç (and a sign for the non-native l). Notably, in common with the Brahmic alphabets, there appears to be no distinction between a consonant followed by an a and a consonant followed by nothing.

k-

x-

g-

c-

ç-

j-

t-

θ-

d-

p-

f-

b-

n-

m-

y-

v-

r-

l-

s-

z-

š-

h-

-a

𐎠

𐎣

𐎧

𐎥

𐎨

𐏂

𐎩

𐎫

𐎰

𐎭

𐎱

𐎳

𐎲

𐎴

𐎶

𐎹

𐎺

𐎼

𐎾

𐎿

𐏀

𐏁

𐏃

-i

𐎡

𐎪

𐎮

𐎷

𐎻

| -u || 𐎢 || 𐎤 || || 𐎦 || || || || 𐎬 || || 𐎯 || || || || 𐎵 || 𐎸 || || || 𐎽 || || || || ||

• logograms:
• Auramazdā: ��, ��, �� (genitive)
• xšāyaθiya- "king": ��
• dahyāu- "country": ��, ��
• baga- "god": ��
• būmi- "earth": ��
• word divider: ��
• numerals:^[1]
  • *1 ��, 2 ��, 5 ������, 7 ��������, 8 ��������, 9 ����������
  • 10 ��, 12 ����, 13 ������, 14 ������, 15 ��������, 18 ����������, 19 ������������, 20 ��, 22 ����, 23 ������, 25 ��������, 26 ��������, 27 ����������, 40 ����, 60 ������,
  • 120 ����

  Unicode

  The Old Persian script is encoded in Plane 1 (Supplementary Multilingual Plane) of Unicode 4.1, occupying code points 103A0–103DF.
  
  

  Old Persian Unicode.org chart (PDF)
  U+	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
  123A0	𐎠	𐎡	𐎢	𐎣	𐎤	𐎥	𐎦	𐎧	𐎨	𐎩	𐎪	𐎫	𐎬	𐎭	𐎮	𐎯
  123B0	𐎰	𐎱	𐎲	𐎳	𐎴	𐎵	𐎶	𐎷	𐎸	𐎹	𐎺	𐎻	𐎼	𐎽	𐎾	𐎿
  123C0	𐏀	𐏁	𐏂	𐏃					𐏈	𐏉	𐏊	𐏋	𐏌	𐏍	𐏎	𐏏
  123D0	𐏐	𐏑	𐏒	𐏓	𐏔	𐏕

  Notes and references

  1. ^ Unattested numbers are not listed. The list of attested numbers is based on AP">Kent, Ronald Grubb (1384 AP). Old Persian: Grammar, Text, Glossary, translated into Persian by S. Oryan (in Persian), pages 699–700. ISBN 964-421-045-X. 

External links

• Omniglot article on Old Persian cuneiform
• Ancient scripts article on Old Persian cuneiform
• Old Persian cuneiform in contrast with Elamite and Late Babylonian cuneiform
• Xerxes, a free Unicode-compatible Old Persian font
• id="CITEREFStolper1995">Stolper, Matthew W. & Jan Tavernier (1995), "From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 1: An Old Persian Administrative Tablet from the Persepolis Fortification", Arta, vol. 2007:1, Paris: Achemenet.com

  ABCs redirects here, for the Alien Big Cats, see British big cats.

  
  
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  The adjective syllabic refers to elements relative to a syllable:

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  Old Persian}}} 
  Writing system: Old Persian Cuneiform
  Language codes
  ISO 639-1: none
  ISO 639-2: peo
  ISO 639-3: peo
  
  Old Persian is one of the two attested forms of Old Iranian languages.
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  Cuneiform
  Child systems Old Persian, Ugaritic
  
  Unicode range U+12000 to U+1236E (Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform)
  U+12400 to U+12473 (Numbers)
  ISO 15924 Xsux
  
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  Unicode’s Universal Character Set potentially supports over 1 million (1,114,112 = 2²⁰ + 2¹⁶ or 17 × 2¹⁶, hexadecimal 110000) code points.
  
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  ISO 15924, Codes for the representation of names of scripts, defines two sets of codes for a number of writing systems (scripts). Each script is given both a four-letter code and a numeric one.
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  International Phonetic Alphabet
  
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  Old Persian}}} 
  Writing system: Old Persian Cuneiform
  Language codes
  ISO 639-1: none
  ISO 639-2: peo
  ISO 639-3: peo
  
  Old Persian is one of the two attested forms of Old Iranian languages.
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  Cuneiform
  Child systems Old Persian, Ugaritic
  
  Unicode range U+12000 to U+1236E (Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform)
  U+12400 to U+12473 (Numbers)
  ISO 15924 Xsux
  
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  Sumerian ( EME.GIR₁₅
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  Akkadian}}} 
  Writing system: Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform 
  Official status
  Official language of: initially Akkad (central Mesopotamia); lingua franca of the Middle East and Egypt in the late Bronze and early Iron Ages.
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  Cuneiform
  Child systems Old Persian, Ugaritic
  
  Unicode range U+12000 to U+1236E (Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform)
  U+12400 to U+12473 (Numbers)
  ISO 15924 Xsux
  
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  6th century BC - 5th century BC
  
  550s BC 540s BC 530s BC - 520s BC - 510s BC 500s BC 490s BC
  529 BC 528 BC 527 BC 526 BC 525 BC
  524 BC 523 BC 522 BC 521 BC 520 BC
  
  - - State leaders - Sovereign states
  -

  Events

  
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  Achaemenid Empire (Persian: هخامنشیان IPA: [haχɒmaneʃijɒn]) (559 BC–330 BC), or
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  Darius I of Persia, the Great
  Great King (Shah) of Persia, Pharaoh of Egypt
  
  Reign 522 BC to 485/486 BC
  Born 549 BC
  Died 485 BC or 486 BC
  Predecessor Smerdis
  Successor Xerxes I
  
  Darius the Great (c.
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  State Party  Iran (Islamic Republic of)
  Type Cultural
  Criteria ii, iii
  Reference 1222
  Region Asia-Pacific
  
  Inscription History
  Inscription 2006  (30th Session)
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  Cyrus II of Persia, The Great
  King of Persia, King of Media
  
  An old Iranian portrait of Cyrus the Great (artist's conception).
  Reign 550 BC to 529 BC
  Born 590 BC or 576 BC
  Anshan
  Died August 530 BC
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  State Party Iran (Islamic Republic of)
  Type Cultural
  Criteria i, ii, iii, iv
  Reference 1106
  Region Asia-Pacific
  
  Inscription History
  Inscription 2004  (28th Session)
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  Arsames (Old Persian: ����������^[1] Aršāma^[2], modern Persian: ارشام‎^[3]
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  Ariaramnes (Old Persian: ����������������^[1] Ariyāramna,^[2]
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  This page is about the city of Hamedan. For the province with this name, see Hamadan Province. For the Yemeni tribal group, see Banu Hamadan

  Coordinates:
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  Ancient Mesopotamia
  
  Euphrates Tigris
  Cities / Empires
  Sumer: Uruk ' Ur ' Eridu
  Kish ' Lagash ' Nippur
  Akkadian Empire: Akkad
  Babylon ' Isin ' Susa
  Assyria: Assur Nineveh
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  The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform abjad (alphabet without vowels), used from around 1500 BC for the Ugaritic language, an extinct Canaanite language discovered in Ugarit, Syria. It has 31 distinct letters.
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  Egyptian hieroglyphs
  Child systems Hieratic
  
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  Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets:

  • the Proto-Sinaitic

  
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  Avestan
  
  ISO 15924 Avst
  
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  The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during the Sassanid era (226-651) to render the Avestan language.
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  Ahura Mazda (Ahura Mazdā) is the Avestan language name for a divinity exalted by Zoroaster as the one uncreated Creator, hence God.
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  Unicode’s Universal Character Set potentially supports over 1 million (1,114,112 = 2²⁰ + 2¹⁶ or 17 × 2¹⁶, hexadecimal 110000) code points.
  
  As of Unicode 5.0.0, 102,012 (9.
  ..... Click the link for more information.
  Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the world's writing systems. Developed in tandem with the Universal Character Set standard and published in book form as The Unicode Standard
  ..... Click the link for more information.