Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

58 1 Political goals
Fig. 1 The Achaemenid rock tombs at Naqˇs-ī Rustam and the Kaba-i Zarduˇst
(Gallas, K. (1978) Iran. Kulturstätten Persiens zwischen Wüsten, Steppen und Bergen: fig. 34:
drawing in Flandin, E. and Coste, P. (1843–54) Voyage en Perse pendant les années
1840 et 1842)
monumental rock tombs. 23 The three languages of the inscription (fig. 2)
also illustrate an attempt to take up Achaemenid traditions. Middle Persian,
Parthian and Greek were the three official scripts in the Sasanian Empire. In
contrast to the Middle Persian text, which was discovered first, the Parthian
and Greek translations of the Middle Persian have been preserved fairly well.
The Middle Persian text was inscribed on the eastern side of the Achaemenid
shrine, the Parthian and Greek texts on the southern and western faces. The
monumental royal inscriptions of the former Achaemenid rulers had also
been trilingual (Babylonian, Elamite, Old Persian). 24 This parallel cannot
be a coincidence.
23 Cf. Fowden 1993: 29, ‘It is unreasonable to maintain that the Sasanians had no knowledge at all of
the Achaemenids. There were, for instance, the visible monuments of the past such as the tombs of
the Achaemenids at Naqsh-ī Rustam, a place that the Sasanian dynasty too regarded as of central
significance and obviously not by coincidence’; cf. also Potter 1990: 372f.
24 On these Achaemenid trilingual inscriptions see Kent 1953: 116–35; on the origins of the trilingual
documentation see Ghirshman 1965: 248–9; on the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in general see
Koch 1992: 13–28; for a comparison of the three versions and on the ‘original’ text see Huyse 1999:
182–209 (vol. 2); on the official and spoken languages in the Achaemenid and Sasanian Empires see
Schmitt 2000: 21–42 and 45–7.