Old Persian Cuneiform
Type	semi-syllabary
Spoken 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) (𐎾), derives from that script's la (𒆷). (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.

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 abugidas, there appears to be no distinction between a consonant followed by an a and a consonant followed by nothing.

• logograms:
  • Auramazdā: 𐏈, 𐏉, 𐏊 (genitive)
  • xšāyaθiya- "king": 𐏋
  • dahyāu- "country": 𐏌, 𐏍
  • baga- "god": 𐏎
  • būmi- "earth": 𐏏
• word divider: 𐏐
• numerals:^[1]
  • 1 𐏑, 2 𐏒, 5 𐏒𐏒𐏑, 7 𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏑, 8 𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏒, 9 𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏑
  • 10 𐏓, 12 𐏓𐏒, 13 𐏓𐏒𐏑, 14 𐏓𐏒𐏒, 15 𐏓𐏒𐏒𐏑, 18 𐏓𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏒, 19 𐏓𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏑, 20 𐏔, 22 𐏔𐏒, 23 𐏔𐏒𐏑, 25 𐏔𐏒𐏒𐏑, 26 𐏔𐏒𐏒𐏒, 27 𐏔𐏒𐏒𐏒𐏑, 40 𐏔𐏔, 60 𐏔𐏔𐏔,
  • 120 𐏕𐏔

Alphabetic properties

Although based on a logo-syllabic prototype, all vowels but short /a/ are written and so the system is essentially an alphabet. There are three vowels, long and short. Initially, no distinction is made for length: 𐎠 a or ā, 𐎡 i or ī, 𐎢 u or ū. However, as in the Brahmic scripts, short a is not written after a consonant: 𐏃 h or ha, 𐏃𐎠 hā, 𐏃𐎡 hi or hī, 𐏃𐎢 hu or hū. (Old Persian is not considered an abugida because vowels are represented as full letters.)

Thirteen out of twenty-two consonants, such as 𐏃 h(a), 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: 𐎭 d or da, 𐎭𐎠 dā, 𐎮𐎡 di or dī, 𐎯𐎢 du or dū. (k, g do not occur before i, and j, v do not occur before u, so these consonants only have two forms each.)

Sometimes medial long vowels are written with a y or v, as in Semitic: 𐎮𐎡𐎹 dī, 𐎯𐎢𐎺 dū. Diphthongs are written by mismatching consonant and vowel: 𐎭𐎡 dai

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: 𐎴 n or na, 𐎴𐎠 nā, 𐎴𐎡 ni or nī, 𐎵𐎢 nu or nū.

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 Castilian 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.)

Unicode

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

Notes and references

1. ^ Unattested numbers are not listed. The list of attested numbers is based on 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
• Stolper, Matthew W. & Jan Tavernier (1995), "From the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project, 1: An Old Persian Administrative Tablet from the Persepolis Fortification", Arta, 2007:1, Paris: Achemenet.com