Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 brill.com/acss An Old Persian Inscription from Phanagoria Vladimir D. Kuznetsov* Department of Classical Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, Museum-Preserve “Phanagoria”, Sennaya, Russia phanagor@mail.ru Alexander B. Nikitin** Oriental Department, State Hermitage, St.-Petersburg, Russia nikitin225@yandex.ru Abstract This article is a publication of the fragmentary Old Persian inscription from the ancient Greek city of Phanagoria (the Taman Peninsula, Russia). The inscription was found in a private house built over the ruins of the city’s fortifications, which perished in a fire in the late first or the early second quarter of the 5th century BC. The fragment of the stele bears six partially preserved lines of the text. The signs at the beginning and the end of each line are missing. Due to the fragmentary nature of the inscription, its contents can not be determined. However, the archaeological context of the find allows us to attribute its authorship to King Xerxes. The new document attests that the Persian Empire took an active interest in the northern coast of the Black Sea. Keywords Old Persian inscription – Phanagoria – Cimmerian Bosporus – Darius – Xerxes * Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 19, Dm. Ulianov str., 117036, Moscow, Russia. ** State Hermitage, Oriental Department, 2, Dvortsovaya ploshchad’, 190000, St.-Petersburg, Russia. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15700577-12341340 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 1 5/8/2019 5:13:22 PM 2 Kuznetsov and Nikitin In recent decades, archaeological investigations have been concentrated on a hill in the central part of the Phanagoria city site – the historical core of the ancient settlement where the acropolis was later built. The oldest cultural layers of the city have been uncovered there. Urban blocks exposed through excavation (remains of houses and public buildings constructed of mud bricks) date from as early as the middle of the 6th century BC. However, it is the discovery of Phanagoria’s fortifications that has special significance.1 They consist of adjacent buildings surrounding the hill on all sides. The walls of these mudbrick constructions are 1.1 m thick, with the maximum preserved height of 1.8 m. In antiquity, the walls may have reached 4-5 m high. The defensive works were destroyed and burned down at the end of the first or at the beginning of the second quarter of the 5th century BC. In the summer of 2016, remains of a small mud-brick building, apparently a private house, were found immediately overlying the ruined fortifications. Only its southern wall and a few displaced mud bricks from the western one have survived. The house also perished in a fire sometime around the middle of the 5th century BC, perhaps a little bit later (to narrow down the date is hardly possible due to the small number of associated finds). It was inside this building, next to its southern wall, that a fragment of a marble stele with an Old Persian inscription was discovered, facing downwards (figs. 1-5).2 The inscription was engraved on the stele of light gray marble, of which only a small portion measuring 41.2 × 35.9 × 11.8-14.8 cm has been preserved. The face and all the sides of the slab were carefully dressed and polished, while the reverse was left completely unworked. The top, the bottom, and the left part of the stele have broken off. Cuneiform signs are written in horizontal rows, with a distance of 6.0-6.2 cm between the lines. The height of the signs varies from 5.0 to 5.5 cm; their depth is up to 1.2 cm. All of them are regular, apparently engraved by a professional. Judging from the thickness of the marble slab and the fairly large size of the cuneiform signs, the stele must have been no less than 2 m high and 1 m wide. The lower portion of the fragment and its left corners are slightly damaged by fire: there remain traces of wooden planks that fell upon the slab and burned down resulting in a black coating on the marble. The fragment of the stele bears six partially preserved lines of the text. The signs at the beginning and the end of each line are missing. All the words 1 An article on Phanagoria’s defensive works will be published upon completion of their archaeological investigation. 2 The search for other fragments of the stele during the 2017 and 2018 field seasons turned out unsuccessful. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 2 5/8/2019 5:13:22 PM An Old Persian Inscription from Phanagoria FIGURE 1 Drawing of the inscription FIGURE 2 Inscribed face of the marble stele 3 Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 3 5/8/2019 5:13:23 PM 4 Kuznetsov and Nikitin FIGURE 3 Partially preserved right side of the stele FIGURE 4 Traces of fire on the surface of the stone Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 4 5/8/2019 5:13:24 PM An Old Persian Inscription from Phanagoria FIGURE 5 5 Reverse of the stele which are legible are presented in the Old Persian lexicon and appear in other inscriptions left by the kings of the Achaemenid dynasty.3 The text: 1. –]va-ha[– 2. –]u(?)-ša : xa-ša[– 3. –]a(?)-va-ma : a[– 4. –]ra(?)-ya-ma : a[– 5. –](?)-ma : a-(?)[– 6. –] : ma-ra-ta(?)[– 1. –]va-ha[– could be read as Dârayavahauš, the genitive form of the name Darius – as in the inscriptions of King Xerxes (“… the son of King Darius, an Achaemenid”). 2. –]u(?)-ša : xa-ša[– most probably are the end of the name Darius and the beginning of the title Dârayavauš : xšâyathiya (“Darius the King”). This particular combination of signs is very common in the royal Achaemenid inscriptions. It is also possible that the name and the title are written here in the genitive case: Dârayavahauš : xšâyathiyahyâ. 3 Kent 1953; Skjærvø 2003; Schmitt 2009 and 2014. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 5 5/8/2019 5:13:25 PM 6 Kuznetsov and Nikitin 3. –]a-va-ma : is likely the end of a verbal form (maybe 1st imperfect of bu – “to be”). Lines 4-5 may also contain verb endings. 6. –] : ma-ra-ta(?)[– is probably the beginning of martiya – “man”, the word that often occurs in the Achaemenid inscriptions. G.P. Basello, Professor at the University of Naples, was so kind as to share with us his own interpretation of the inscription, which we would like to publish here: It seems that there are no known comparisons in the extant Old Persian corpus, except for the first two extant lines where the signs -v-h- (line x+1) should be part of the genitive of « Darius », maybe in the royal titulary of Xerxes, so « [Xerxes, the king, son] of Darius, [the king] »; obviously there are many other possibilities, since we have only few signs. In the fourth extant line, r-y-m is puzzling. This sequence is attested only in two Old Persian words but none is suitable here, I think, so maybe it is a new word. In the six extant line I read m-r-t[-i-y- …, probably « man ». Here is my full reading with highly tentative restorations (the one in the first extant line is probably too long and given only as an example of a possible syntactic construction): (x+1) d-a-r-y]-v-h-[u-š x-š-a-y-θ-i-y-h-y-a : p-u-ç-a : θ-a-t-i-y : x-š-y-a-r-š-a : x-ša-y-θ-i-y : (x+2) d-a-r-y-v-]u-š : x-š-[a-y-θ-i-y : ??? (cf. the inscription XV (Xerxes Van)) (x+3) p-ru-??]u-v-m : a-[ … (x+4) … ]r-y-m : a-[ … (x+5) : a-]d-m : a-k[u?-u-n-v-m : ?? (x+6)] : m-r-t[-i-y(x+7) ]?[ The first sign on lines x+2, x+3 and x+5 could be also “d” instead of “u”. The surviving part of Darius’ name and the archaeological context of the find4 allow us to date the inscription to the reign of king Xerxes (486-465 BC). Judging from the contents of the text and the thickness of the marble slab, the document must have been considerably longer than the extant fragment. Most likely, it was bilingual and included an Ancient Greek version of the same 4 For more information and a historical commentary on the inscription see the article by V.D. Kuznetsov published in the present volume. Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 6 5/8/2019 5:13:25 PM An Old Persian Inscription from Phanagoria 7 text – otherwise the inhabitants of the Hellenic city would have been unable to understand its meaning. All the known Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions are so called ‘royal’ inscriptions. They are made in the name of kings and describe their achievements. Most of these documents appear in the royal residences at Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan and Pasargadae. Unfortunately, due to the extremely fragmentary nature of the Phanagoria inscription, its origin, contents and purpose cannot be determined with certainty. Yet this is a document of great historical significance. The very fact that it was found in the Cimmerian Bosporus is remarkable. Let us recall here the evidence from Herodotos (4.91) about the stele set up during Darius’ Scythian campaign – on the way to the Istros, by the Tearus river.5 The existence of the Old Persian inscriptions outside the Achaemenid Empire is not completely without parallel; still such a discovery is truly an extraordinary event. The new document from Phanagoria attests that – starting from the expedition of Ariaramnes and Darius’ Scythian campaign – the Persian Empire had a long-lasting interest in the northern coast of the Black Sea. Being authored by Xerxes, the Phanagoria inscription places the Cimmerian Bosporus in the context of the Greco-Persian Wars. To all appearance, during their collision with the Hellenes the Persians also became interested in the Pontos Euxeinos. Bibliography Kent, R.G. (1953). Old Persian. Grammar. Texts. Lexicon. 2nd ed. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Schmitt, R. (2009). Die altpersischen Inschriften der Achaimeniden. Editio minor mit deutscher Übersetzung. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert. Schmitt, R. (2014). Wörterbuch der altpersischen Königsinschriften. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert. Skjærvø, P.O. (2003). An Introduction to Old Persian. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University. 5 “From the headwaters of the river Tearus flows the best and finest water of all; and to them came, leading an army against the Scythians, the best and finest man of all, Darius son of Hystaspes, king of Persia and all the continent” (translated by A.D. Godley, Loeb). Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 25 (2019) 1-7 ACSS_025_01_01-Kutnetzov-Nikitin.indd 7 5/8/2019 5:13:25 PM