Old Persian (Aryan)

Edited by Shapour Suren-Pahlav. Linguistically, Old Persian is the oldest attested Persid language, which is classified in the group of Western Iranian languages. The Middle-Persian (Pahlavi) and New Persian, are the direct continuation of the Old Persian evolution. Old Persian was the vernacular tongue of the Achaemenid monarchs, but had already been spoken for a few centuries prior to the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty. Old Persian script was called Aryan (OP. ariyÃ-) by the Achaemenids. It is largely known from an extensive body of cuneiform inscriptions "" especially from the time of Darius the Great (r. 522-486 BCE) and his son Xerxes (r. 486-465BCE). However, some scholars believe that Aryan was invented by the first Iranian dynasty, the Medes (728-550BCE), and then adopted by the Achaemenids as the imperial script. Old Persian script continued to survive, though in a corrupt form described by Skj¿rv¸ as "˜post-Old-Persian', as late as the first century BCE.

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