CLAS 410 - Old Persian

This course is an introduction to the language, literature and writing system of Old Persian. Old Persian, one of the oldest Indo-European languages which survived in written records, was the native language of the Achaemenid kings and one of the languages used in the state documents of the Achaemenid Empire (550-320 BCE). The corpus of Old Persian mainly consists of royal inscriptions issued by Darius I (533-486 BCE) and Xerxes I (486-465 BCE). The royal inscriptions include the political ideology of the kings, and chronicle some of the major events that occurred during their reigns. By analyzing the texts in the original language and in the context of the political history of the empire, this course also offers an introduction to the history of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian empire which remained to this date the ideal of kingship in Iran, and profoundly influenced all later Iranian dynasties.