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Aramaic as the Official
Language of the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550.330 BC)
By: Sebastian Brock and David G.K. Taylor
Aramaic in Turkey
It has already been seen that Aramaic inscriptions in modern Turkey
go back to the 8th century BC. when Bar Rakkab put up a series of
inscriptions at Zencirli. In the Achaemenid period (538-323 BC) quite a
number of short Aramaic inscriptions from the same general area have
turned up. One of these, found at Gozne, some 20 kms north of Mersin is
a boundary stone, and a curse is invoked on anyone who moves it: “may
the great Baal of the Heavens, Sahar and Shemesh (the moon and sun
gods), seek out him and his progeny”. Another, found near Tarsus, simply
records a picnic during a hunting expedition: “I am Washonesh, son of
Apwashi and grandson of Washonesh, my mother being Ashulkerati: while I
was hunting here. this was the place I had my meal”. Under the
Achaemenid Empire Aramaic was probably the language used in diplomatic
relations between the Achaemenid kings and the Greek cities of western
Asia Minor. The Greek historian Herodotus recounts how Darius I (BC
522-486), on reaching the Bosporus, set up two stelaes listing the names
of all the nations who were serving in his army: one of these, he tells
us (Histories. IV.87), was in Greek writing, while the other was in
“Assyrian letters [Assyria grammata)’”. Since no one in that region
would have been capable of reading a cuneiform inscription (in either
Akkadian or Old Persian), it is very likely that Herodotus meant Aramaic,
the international language of diplomacy. The same term “Assyrian
letters” certainly means Aramaic in another Greek historian, Thucydides
(History, IV.50) who records that in BC 425/4 the Athenian general
Aristeides arrested a Persian messenger named Artaphernes who was
carrying a letter from the Persian king Artaxerxes destined for the
Spartans (who were enemies of the Athenians): He was taken to Athens
where the letter was translated from “Assyrian letters” into Greek.
Since the letter will have been written on leather, the language must
have been Aramaic, and cannot possibly have been Akkadian. The slightly
later Greek historians, Xenophon and Diodorus, both speak of “Syrian
letters (Syria grammata)’’ when they refer to the use of Aramaic in the
Achaemenid Empire. The source of this confusing usage, where the terms
“Assvrian letters” and “Syrian letters” both mean Aramaic, lies in the
fact, noted earlier (in Chapter 2), that the Greeks, like the Egyptians,
named all the territory of the former Assyrian Empire as ”Assyria”, even
when they were just referring to the western Provinces (that is,
Palestine and Syria).
A passage which sheds some interesting sidelight on the ambiguity of the
term “Assyrian letters” is to be found in the last Epistle (no. 21) of a
Greek collection of correspondence attributed to the famous Athenian
politician Themistokles (c.524 -459 BC), in which he asks someone to
send him “some gold and silver vessels inscribed with the old Assyrian
letters, not those which Darius, the father of Xerxes, recently
prescribed to the Persians”. What are these two different kinds of
“Assvrian letters”? The more recent ones clearly refer to Old Persian
cuneiform, introduced c.520 for royal inscriptions. Since a Greek would
not be able to distinguish between Old Persian cuneiform and Akkadian
cuneiform script, it is clear that the “old Assyrian letters” will refer,
not to Akkadian cuneiform, but to Aramaic script. By good fortune,
archaeological finds confirm this conclusion (bv C. Nylander) very
nicely, for several inscribed gold and silver cups and bowls from
western Iran, dating from the late eighth to the fifth century, are
known, and these bear their owners name either in Aramaic script or in
Old Persian cuneiform. Gold and silver ware of this kind was much sought
after. And the plunder taken by the Greeks after their victory over the
Persians at the Battle of Plataea in BC 479 might well have been the
source for the vessels that Themistokles was asking for. Essentially,
then, for the ancient Greeks the phrase “Assyrian letters” simply meant
an “oriental script” –whose identity can only be deduced today from the
context in which the term is found. Probably this is why later Greek
writers preferred the term “Synan letters”, in order to avoid the
ambiguity of the earlier phrase.
A clear indication that Greek and Aramaic functioned alongside one
another in at least some of the Greek cities in Asia Minor is provided
by a couple of bilingual inscriptions from Lycia (southwest Turkey). One
of these is a short funerary inscription commemorating Artimas son of
Arsapes. Found in the mid nineteenth century in Limyra, while the
second, much longer, was only discovered in 1973, at Xanthos, on the
river Koca Cayi. This is in fact a trilingual inscription, written in
Aramaic, Greek and Lycian (the local language of the region). The text,
which records the institution of a new cult in the city, begins:
In the month Siwan (May/June), in the first year of king Artaxerxes, in
the city of Orna, Pixodaros son of Katamnos, the satrap in Caria and
Lycia. said: The citizens of Orna have decided to institute a cult to
the god Kandawats and his companions, and they have made Simias, son of
Koddoris, priest.
The inscription goes on to state that the citizens provided a plot of
land for the new god, with funds to ensure that a sheep was sacrificed
every new moon and an ox once a year. Though there is some uncertainty
which Artaxerxes is meant, probably it is Artaxerxes III, in which case
the date will be 358 BC.
The same uncertainty concerning which
Artaxerxes is involved surrounds another important inscription from
western Turkey, dated to his tenth year. And found in Sardis; this is a
funerary text written in Aramaic and another local language, Lydian. The
Aramaic name of Sardis is SPRD, in other words, the same as the biblical
Sepharad (Obadiah 20), which later gave rise to the term ‘’Sephardic’’
for Jews from medieval Spain. Although Sardis will almost certainly have
had Greeks among its population, the only hint of their presence in this
inscription is in the final curse on anyone who damages the tombstone:
“May Artemis of Koloe and (Artemis) of the Ephesians scatter and destroy
his gateway, his house, his possessions, his soil, his water and
everything he has” - for here is the same Greek goddess whose devotees
caused the apostle Paul such trouble in Ephesus (Acts of the Apostles
19:28). Another Aramaic funerary monument from the Achaemenid period was
discovered in 1965 at Ergili (ancient Daskyleion) on the southern coast
of the sea of Marmora, not far from Istanbul:
These depictions are of Elnaph, die son of Ishai; he made them for his
funerary monument. I adjure you by Bel and Nabu, anyone who passes this
way, do not disturb (me)’
The “depictions” take the form of a scene, immediately above the
inscription, of two horses drawing a chariot on which a large object,
probably Elnaph’s sarcophagus, is placed, while behind the chariot are
two figures walking: in all probability the scene represents Elnaph’s
funeral cortege.
Sources:
The Hidden Pearl Vol. I The Ancient Aramaic
Heritage, chapter 6, page 122, Sebastian Brock and David G.K. Taylor
J.A Fitzmyer and Stephen A Kaufman, An
Aramaic Bibliography, part 1, Old, Official and Biblical Aramaic,
Baltimore 1992,
J.C.L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic
Inscriptions, 2, Aramaic Inscriptions, Oxford 1975 |
